


Terra Nova

by pinecontents



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Alternate Universe - Never Met, M/M, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, western but make it sci fi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:54:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 35,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27338257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinecontents/pseuds/pinecontents
Summary: Rhett spent his entire life working towards a single goal: crossing dimensions to work on an untouched Earth in a parallel universe. When he gets there, though, he finds that the most fascinating thing about it isn't the pristine wilderness or the exotic animal life--it's one of the guys who works there.
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Comments: 215
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to @sohox and @mythicaltzu for their help and support! It is always appreciated.

Rhett had always believed in the multiverse.

As far back as he could remember, he devoured any story that involved travel between parallel worlds. Books, movies, shows, comics, video games, fanfiction… Rhett wasn’t picky about the medium. He just couldn’t get enough alternate universes.

The winter after he turned thirteen, an amazing thing happened: UCLA announced they had spent the past three years working on a project resulting in the discovery of another Earth, seemingly exactly the same as ours, just without people. It was a pure, clean Earth, without pollution or climate change.

It wasn’t quite the parallel universe of Rhett’s fantasies, with an alternate version of himself out there, but it was pretty damn close, and it became his dream to one day visit the other Earth. Not even the researchers at UCLA had done that yet.

Two years later, when it was announced that Professor Yuxia Wu-Johnson from UCLA had successfully crossed the threshold, becoming the first person to step onto Terra Nova (as they were calling it), Rhett decided he was going to do everything in his power he could go to UCLA and study under her.

Everything he learned about Terra Nova fascinated him. Despite the “entrance” of the portal being in LA, the “exit” was somewhere near the eastern Kansas/Nebraska border. There were massive herds of bison, of course, as they’d never been decimated by European settlers, but there were also megafauna that were extinct on Earth: giant ground sloths, dire wolves, saber toothed cats, and maybe even wooly mammoths.

The portal was only about the size of a garage door, and only objects that were carried by humans could cross through. That meant that the research base that UCLA was constructing was quite small and simple, at least to begin with. It had a sort of Wild West feel to it, this tiny outpost all alone in a sea of grass on an empty planet.

Rhett was ravenous for information about Terra Nova. He subscribed to every website and news feed he could find, followed every possible social media account, and spent huge amounts of time discussing everything with other Terra Nova fans, who were just as obsessed as he was.

His parents tried to steer Rhett away from his monomania, but it was impossible. He kept his grades up, of course, and played basketball like his dad wanted (it kept him fit, might earn him a scholarship, and he loved the competition), but all of his extracurriculars were things that would be useful on Terra Nova. Horseback riding, target shooting, hunting, orienteering, first aid… Rhett did it all.

Most of it paid off, in the end. He didn’t get a basketball scholarship, but he did get accepted to UCLA, where he quickly discovered he didn’t have a knack for high level physics. Instead, he majored in biology and ecology and graduated with honors. Rhett then immediately applied and was accepted as a graduate student in a biology program run by Professor Jeremy Williams, who was studying small mammals on Terra Nova.

Suddenly, it seemed like his lifelong dream could become a reality.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

First year grad students did not get to go to Terra Nova. They didn’t even get to think about it.

Instead, Rhett did what he thought was the next best thing: working with an animal from Terra Nova. Not megafauna, though. More like microfauna. He got a place at a lab that worked with zebra mice. So far, they were the only animals from Terra Nova that had been brought back to Earth. They were cute little things, shaped like a kangaroo rat but smaller, with striped brown and tan coats. Unfortunately, Rhett’s current task was comparing their anatomy to Earth rodents, so he spent a lot of time peering through a microscope and very carefully dissecting them.

Second year grad students didn’t get to go to Terra Nova, but at least they could begin looking into it.

Rhett took a summer internship at an environmental research center in Iowa, where he worked in a prairie similar to the one around headquarters in Terra Nova. On his days off, he went horseback riding and skeet shooting--activities that he legitimately enjoyed but hadn’t been able to do much over the past few years.

Third year grad students didn’t get to go to Terra Nova, but they could apply for one of two open positions for an expedition that would take place the following autumn.

There were twelve students in Dr. Williams’s program, three of whom decided not to apply. A one in nine chance was better than Rhett had ever hoped. He submitted his application with all his supporting documents, and hoped and prayed harder than he’d ever hoped or prayed for anything before in his life.

He wasn’t chosen. He didn’t even make it as an alternate.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Where the _hell_ have you been?” Rhett’s coworker Shelby snapped as he wandered into the lab. She was in Dr. Williams’s program, too, but hadn’t applied because she had two little kids.

“Uh, Starbucks?” Rhett held up his iced vanilla latte and checked his watch. It was 8:32am, which was honestly earlier than he usually rolled into the lab. “Why, what’s up?”

“Jenny and Emmanuel got in a wreck on the way to work. They’re both in the hospital.”

“Oh, shit.” Rhett’s stomach dropped. “Are they okay?” Emmanuel was his closest friend in the program, and although he’d never really gotten along with Jenny (especially after she’d been chosen to go on the Terra Nova trip and he hadn’t), he certainly didn’t want anything bad to happen to her.

“I mean, eventually, but…” Shelby pushed her too-long bangs out of her face. “Not before the expedition leaves in two weeks! They weren’t even supposed to be in the same car.”

“Uh… what?” 

“Like before Apollo 11! If Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got in a car crash together before their trip, they’d be fucked.” Shelby threw up her hands in exasperation. “Like we’re fucked, Rhett, because Emmanuel’s the alternate.”

Rhett choked on his latte. Shelby whacked him unhelpfully on the back. He knew there was a backup alternate because Emmanuel had mentioned it once, but no one knew who it was except Dr. Williams and the other team leaders, and it seemed like a moot point anyway. It had been nearly a year since he’d been passed over as a participant for the Terra Nova trip, and Rhett had been doing his best to temper his disappointment. It was always possible that he could go on some future, as-yet-unplanned trip, given that he was one of the few people on Earth who had experience with Novan animals, but that was cold comfort.

Now, everything had changed. Once he’d coughed up as much of his drink as he was going to and was able to speak again, Rhett wheezed, “Wait, who’s the backup now?”

“Now that Jenny’s not going?” Shelby said. “It’s you.”


	2. Chapter 2

“ _What_?” Rhett stared at her, utterly astonished. “What… how… you…”

“J-Dubs let it slip when he called me because you didn’t pick up,” Shelby said. Rhett pulled out his phone and saw three missed calls from Dr. Williams, good old J-Dubs himself.

“I…” There were a million things swimming through Rhett’s head, but what ended up coming out was, “I’m supposed to go to a wedding next month.”

“You’re not the groom, right?”

“Uh, no.”

“Best man?”

“No.”

“Then who fucking cares?” Shelby exclaimed. “You’ve wanted this forever.”

“Yeah, I know.” Rhett shook his head. “Holy shit!”

“Yeah, holy shit!” she echoed. “You better call J-Dubs back before I tell him you have a wedding you can’t miss.”

“You wouldn’t _dare_ ,” Rhett said, but he called right away anyway.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

There was a lot for Rhett to do over the next two weeks. Packing, a physical, vaccinations for just about everything up to and including rabies, anthrax, and smallpox, unpacking, convincing his mom that his cousin was totally fine with him going on the trip instead of attending her wedding, a psychological evaluation, repacking, multiple meetings with Dr. Williams and the expedition members, and trying to learn how to take over Jenny’s job.

Rhett felt horribly guilty about the whole thing. To Jenny’s credit, she was very gracious to him. It wasn’t his fault that someone had run a red light and t-boned her car or that she was looking at spending the next four months in physical therapy learning how to walk again instead of setting up camera traps in Terra Nova.

“I just hope I don’t fuck it up too much,” he said to Emmanuel as they ate pizza the night before he left. Emmanuel insisted on watching _Coraline_ , which he insisted was “the finest alternate universe movie ever made”.

Emmanuel snorted. “You kidding, bro? _Anything_ you get a picture of is going to be published in every single journal. You’ll probably get a whole genus named after you.”

“I’ll name a species after you,” Rhett said. “Nova something something Olajide...ii? Olajideum?” He frowned. Surely someone had figured out how to Latinize Yoruba names.

“Not if you get Jenny’s rabbit thing,” Emmanuel said. “That better be Nova something something Campbellia.”

“I dunno, that might be adding insult to injury,” Rhett said. He noticed Emmanuel leaning over to grab his crutches. “No, dude, don’t get up. What do you need?”

“I gotta pee, man. You wanna aim it for me?”

“Uh, no, not really.” Emmanuel clumped out of the room, leaving Rhett to watch Mr. Bobinsky’s mouse circus on the TV. The stop motion mice were about the same shape as Rhett’s zebra mice, with their long tails and big hind feet.

Rhett was equal parts excited and terrified. He’d been dreaming of visiting Terra Nova since he was thirteen--literally half his life. There was no way it was going to live up to all his expectations, but there were probably ways it would surprise him that he hadn’t even considered.

He was still lost in thought when Emmanuel collapsed back onto the couch. “You forget about that?” he asked, nodding at the half eaten slice of pizza in Rhett’s hand.

“Yeah.” Rhett took an absentminded bite. 

Emmanuel shook his head. He’d seen Rhett quietly freak out many times over the years. “You’re gonna do fine, bro.”

“I know.”

“You always do.”

“Yeah.”

“And if you don’t, Jenny will personally hunt you down and feed you to a saber tooth cat.”

Rhett smiled into his pizza at the mental image of Jenny Campbell hauling herself into Terra Nova, external fixator on her leg and all, to kick his ass. “You always know just what to say.”

Emmanuel gave him a big grin and a double thumbs up.

~*~*~*~*~*~

“This is the part I’ve been dreading,” Samson said to Rhett. “I _hate_ puking.”

“Why?” The human body did not take kindly to moving between worlds, as Yuxia Wu-Johnson had quickly discovered. The first time a person stepped through to Terra Nova, they could usually expect to spend two or three hours throwing up what seemed like everything they’d ever eaten. These days, people crossed over only after taking a cocktail of several different antiemetic drugs, so it wasn’t as bad as it used to be, but it was still pretty much a guarantee that they were going to throw up at least once. 

“I dunno, it just feels wrong. I haven’t thrown up since I was 11.” Samson looked genuinely unhappy at the prospect of breaking his no-puking streak. On paper, he was the personification of white male privilege--good looking, with warm brown eyes and hair to match, came from money, smart as hell, good at sports, private schools, legacy student--but Samson was also quite possibly the nicest, most genuine person Rhett had ever met. Everyone liked him, which was close to a miracle given the personalities in Dr. Williams’s grad program. A year ago, when Rhett had applied for one of two possible spots out of a field of nine entrants, it had really been for one spot out of a field of eight. Samson’s application had been merely a formality.

The scrub wearing woman who’d given them their pills forty five minutes earlier stuck her head back into the little waiting room. “You guys ready? Who wants to go first?”

“Me, I guess,” Rhett said. Samson could hold on to his haven’t-puked-since-I-was-11 status a little longer. Rhett grabbed his bag and followed her out of the room. It only contained his most necessary and personal things. Most of his belongings, along with all the camera trap equipment he’d inherited from Jenny, was packed up in big, heavy duty plastic trunks with a piece of tape reading _R. McLaughlin_ slapped over the _J. Campbell_ label. Someone who’d already been through the portal before and was therefore immune to (most of) the crossing effects would be taking care of all that while Rhett, Samson, and the other first timers acclimatized.

The portal and all the associated offices that supported it were housed in a converted gym. Rhett followed the nurse down the hall to the portal room, which had once been a basketball court. It still had the wooden floor with the court markings. About a dozen people milled around, checking lists of equipment and doing all the other tasks Rhett didn’t have to worry about, because he was about to have all his attention focused on a bucket.

The portal wasn’t visible from the door of the court. Bizarrely, it was on the other side of the hallway Rhett had just walked down. He immediately turned as he entered to look at it, even though he knew it would be behind a curtain. No one looked at it unless they absolutely had to.

Even so, Rhett stood transfixed. Behind the burgundy velvet curtain (which had gold fringe along the bottom and had apparently been sourced from the auditorium of an old high school) was what he’d hoped and dreamed and worked so hard to reach for so many years.

“Go take a peek,” came a voice behind him. Rhett jumped a little. He hadn’t noticed Dr. Williams approach.

“I can?” Rhett asked. Dr. Williams nodded, so Rhett carefully walked up to where the curtains met in the middle. There was a little sound, a crackly, staticky, susurrus, and a very faint smell that made him think of the air late at night on the Fourth of July, all humidity and gunpowder. He pulled it back and looked.

“Aaahh!” Rhett dropped the curtain and threw his hands up to cover his eyes. Dr. Williams laughed behind him. “What the _fuck_. I’m supposed to go through that?”

There was nothing behind the curtain. Not the painted cinder block wall of the gym, not a hole, not blackness, not a shimmering silver film, _nothing_. Rhett had heard people talk about it, had seen pictures (where it just showed up as a blurry smear), but nothing had prepared him. His opinion of Professor Wu-Johnson, which had already been high, went up a few more degrees. She’d made a portal in her lab and walked through without knowing what awaited on the other side (turned out to be throwing up in a prairie). Obviously, she was extremely brave, and also completely insane.

“Yeah, and you need to do it now.” Dr. Williams handed Rhett a bucket. It was a three gallon blue plastic bucket, the kind any hardware store sold, and it seemed way too pedestrian for what was about to happen. He took hold of the edge of the curtain. “Just close your eyes and go through. They’re waiting for you.”

“I… okay.” The part of Rhett that always wanted to appear cool took over. Dr. Williams had known him for years and knew exactly what sort of person he was, but it was suddenly extremely important to Rhett that he come off like a confident guy who was not quietly freaking out. He closed his eyes and heard the swish of the velvet curtains and the crackly noise get a little bit louder. Rhett took one step, then another. The portal felt like he was drenched in ice water and boiling water at the same time. The ground under his boots changed from wooden parquet to hard packed dirt, and the echoey sounds of people moving around the basketball court vanished. The air was warmer and wetter, and there was a little breeze.

Rhett opened his eyes. He was in a building that seemed like an airplane hangar for a tiny municipal airport. It was full of people moving around doing the same sort of things as the people in the basketball court had been doing.

He stood for a moment, astonished at the change, and for a second thought that he’d somehow escaped the transition nausea.

Then he threw up.


	3. Chapter 3

Rhett was too busy being sick to see Samson come through the portal, but he’d recovered enough half an hour later to see two other first timers materialize in front of the portal. Watching it made him feel like he was going to throw up again, but it was completely fascinating. He looked away as they leaned over their buckets, though. Watching that really would make him sick.

Three hours later, he and Samson had recovered enough to eat some lunch. It was a stew that was very much like chicken and dumplings, except the chicken was some kind of Novan bird that was almost, but not quite, like dark meat turkey. Rhett liked it, but then again, he liked most food.

Rhett’s team and the other newcomers, a wind turbine team, were actually going to an outpost that was about three days’ travel from headquarters, so they spent the rest of the day loading their gear into a couple of wagons. There were no vehicles in Terra Nova, of course, so they’d be traveling on horseback. Rhett had been preparing for this for years, unlike Samson, who had only started lessons after he’d been chosen for the trip.

That night, everyone spent a few hours getting to know each other around a bonfire. Rhett spent most of the evening talking with a woman named Patty, who was one of the people whose job it was to travel between headquarters and the two outposts and back, ferrying people and supplies and information where they needed to go. She told Rhett that they’d had to fetch a horse from the East outpost specifically for him, because it was the only one on the planet tall enough for him. Horses physically can’t vomit, so bringing one into Terra Nova was a production that required a team of vets to anesthetize them, a team of stretcher bearers to haul them through the portal, and then another team of vets to attend to them on the other side. They were rare, precious, and expensive.

Hearing that there was a special horse just for him made Rhett insist on going to see it right away. He and Patty were joined by the turbine girls, Erica and Sasha, who immediately began a conversation about teenage girls liking horses as a Freudian manifestation of penis envy and the desire to control masculine energy. 

Rhett looked over at Patty with wide, slightly alarmed eyes. She gave him a knowing smile. Patty had weathered brown skin and long, graying hair and looked exactly like the sort of woman who would lead a wagon train through a landscape full of huge, dangerous wildlife on a strange planet. She led them to a metal pole barn, where Rhett followed her to a stall at the end of the row. “This is Jupiter.”

“Ohhhh.” Rhett was in love. Jupiter was a tall, roan Appaloosa, white with brown spots. “He’s beautiful.”

“Calm, too.” Patty stroked Jupiter’s nose and then left Rhett with him as she went to answer Sasha and Erica’s hundreds of questions. Rhett spent a while longer with Jupiter before going back to the party, where he met many more people whose names he quickly forgot and probably stayed up too late. Eventually, though, he crawled into his sleeping bag in the tent he shared with Samson and fell asleep immediately.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Someone shook Rhett’s shoulder. “Rise and shine, buddy!” It was Samson, who sounded way too chipper considering how early it was. 

Rhett opened one bleary eye and squinted up at him. “Are you gonna be like this the whole trip?”

“Yeah. I’m a morning person. C’mon, there’s bacon and eggs. _Earth_ eggs.”

A couple hours later, they set out. Rhett, Samson, and Dr. Williams, Sasha, Erica, and their team lead (a guy named Andre. Rhett didn’t know if he was a professor or what), Patty, a pair of wagons each driven by a middle aged, outdoorsy looking man that Rhett recognized from the bonfire last night, and a new guy.

The new guy was about Rhett and Samson’s age, and he looked even groggier than Rhett felt. Rhett overheard him telling Patty that his flight had been delayed and he hadn’t come through the portal until nearly 3am. He kept to himself as he got his trunk loaded onto a wagon and saddled his horse, and then rode at the end of the group while Patty took the lead.

Rhett found himself riding beside Dr. Williams. “Do you know who that is?” he asked.

“Mmhm, that’s Link Neal,” the older man replied. “The operations assistant. The ranch hand, basically. I know I’ve mentioned him.”

He certainly had. “ _That’s_ Link?” Rhett said, astonished. He twisted around and glanced back at the slumped figure behind them. Dr. Williams had always spoken of Link with the highest of praise. Smart, competent, and experienced--he’d been employed at the outpost since it had been set up five years ago. “I imagined him way older.”

Rhett had also imagined Link dressed as a cowboy, and while he did have the boots and the battered Carhartt jacket, he also had a pair of trendy, clear framed glasses and a black snapback. At some point he’d added a high powered hunting rifle to his ensemble, suddenly reminding Rhett that they were in the middle of nowhere, and there were saber tooth cats out there.

That thought distracted him, and he spent the rest of the morning talking about megafauna with Dr. Williams. Link rode, forgotten, behind him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They traveled all day.

For Rhett, who was a slightly rusty but experienced horseman, it was gruelling. For Samson, Erica, and Sasha, it was excruciating.

“Andre told me I needed more practice,” Erica said ruefully when they finally stopped for the evening. “I should have listened.”

“My poor ass… my thighs…” Samson groaned as he lowered himself to the ground.

“My neck, my back,” Sasha sang. “Lick my puss--sorry!” She cut off, laughing, as Erica smacked her arm. “It’s a classic, though!”

Patty lit a fire and stuck potatoes in the coals to roast as she made a sort of sloppy joe topping for them. “This is the last time you’ll have Earth beef for a while,” she said. “It’s all bison from here on out.”

“It’s pretty similar,” Link said. He’d been sitting quietly between Patty and Dr. Williams, listening to the conversation but not saying anything. “Leaner, though.”

“Do you hunt bison?” Rhett asked, remembering Link’s rifle. He’d been studying Link as he sat on the other side of the fire. Link was slender and tough, like a steel cable, with delicate features that should have seemed out of place with his worn jacket and calloused hands, but somehow they fit. He had short dark hair, full lips, and bright blue eyes behind his glasses, a combination that Rhett found very appealing, along with a Southern accent that sounded like home.

Link also had a heavy five o’clock shadow and dark circles under his eyes. “Sometimes,” he answered, and yawned. “Sorry. Bison are pretty big, so we don’t have to do it very often. There’s a big chest freezer at the outpost. It’s like… 75% meat in there.”

That seemed to be the extent of his conversation ability for the night. Link vanished off to his little tent as soon as he was finished eating. It wasn’t long before everyone else headed to bed, too. Samson fell asleep quickly, but Rhett lay awake for a while, listening to the nickering of the horses and the unfamiliar night sounds of a strange world.


	4. Chapter 4

Samson was not nearly as chipper the next morning, given that he was so sore he could barely move. Rhett was sore, too, but his pride prevented him from admitting it. He was also secretly delighted to be better at something than Samson, for once.

The rest of the team was suffering as well. All the experience and preparation in the (new) world couldn’t make Dr. Williams and Andre any younger, so they were dealing with the after effects of sleeping on the ground in their mid sixties. Sasha and Erica were in the same boat as Samson. Only Link, Patty, and the wagon guys (who, it turned out, were both named Jim) were in good shape. Rhett caught them giving each other looks that said _These people are a mess_.

Rhett, for his part, spent a lot of time looking around at the scenery. They were travelling through what was southeastern Nebraska on Earth. It wasn’t quite the Oregon Trail experience Rhett had imagined--they traveled on a dirt road that ran next to a line of telephone poles that connected the outpost to headquarters--but the limestone bluffs in the distance captivated him. The tall grass was familiar from his time in Iowa, but the prairie there had been flat apart from some rolling hills. The bluffs were _dramatic_.

After lunch (another stew-type thing that Patty whipped up), Sasha let out a yell. “Look!” She pointed to something at the horizon. “It’s a herd of, um, antelope? Is that right?”

“Yeah,” Link said. “Saiga. They’re extinct in North America on Earth. There’s still some in Central Eurasia, though.” He had a pair of binoculars that he handed around. Rhett was the last to get a look. The saiga were a creamy tan color, with curved, ribbed horns. They had strangely bloated snouts, with nostrils that pointed straight down. The herd was huge. There had to be hundreds of them, all grazing their way across the prairie.

“Wow,” Rhett said as he handed back the binoculars. “There’s so _many_.”

“Yep.” Link said. He stuck his rifle in a holster on his saddle so he could stow away the binoculars. “They’re easier to hunt than bison, but their meat is really gamey. No one likes it.”

Rhett laughed. “How many of these animals have you eaten, man?”

“Mmm, most of the herbivores. No predators, though.” Link smiled as he took the rifle back out and laid it across his saddle. “You hunt?”

“A little,” Rhett said. “Not since I moved to California, though. I used to hunt partridges and pheasants and stuff with my uncle. I like fishing more.”

Link nodded approvingly. “I thought you might. You ride better than most of the college people, too.” He jerked his head minutely towards the other three grad students. Rhett felt a spark of pride that Link, confident, competent Link, thought he wasn’t as hopeless as his peers.

“I started taking lessons in high school so I wouldn’t look stupid if I ever came here,” Rhett said. “I was really into trail riding, but I had to quit when I went to school. The only reason I’m not as fucked as those guys is because I was in Iowa this past summer and I actually had the time and the opportunity to ride.”

“‘If you ever came here’?” Link repeated, brow slightly furrowed.

“Yeah… Even when I was really little, I always wanted to travel to another world, so when it turned out that there _was_ another world, I decided I’d do everything I could to get there.” Rhett shrugged, embarrassed.

“Ah,” Link said. “Guess it worked, huh?” There was a very slight hint of frostiness and disapproval in his voice. Rhett was confused by the change in his demeanor. Just a moment ago, Link seemed mildly impressed with his skills.

“Uh, yeah.” Rhett changed the subject to the bluffs, something that had nothing to do with his background, in the hope of returning to the friendly conversation they’d been having earlier, but Link remained a little cold, a little distant.

Rhett didn’t know what he’d done wrong, but he desperately wanted to fix it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Twenty four hours of riding, sleeping in tents, and eating stew later, they reached the outpost. It was a low, sprawling building in the “prefab pole barn” style of architecture that was prevalent on Terra Nova , with a roof covered in solar panels, antennas, and other equipment that Rhett didn’t recognize. There was a large, houselike section in the middle, with a low wing on either side, making a sort of U shaped courtyard. An unattached barn stood a little way behind the house, and the whole thing was surrounded by a high, barbed wire fence. Rhett heard the faint, telltale hum of electricity as they came up to the gate. 

Link hopped off his horse and pulled it open. “Welcome to North Outpost,” he said.

Patty led the academics to the barn as Link and the two wagon Jims began unloading supplies. There was another woman waiting in the barn for them. She looked just as tough as Patty, with long black braids and a rangy build, but her face was transformed by a warm smile as she introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Marty,” she said as she helped the less experienced people with their horses. “I take care of the horses here.”

“I thought Link did that,” Rhett said as he unbuckled Jupiter’s saddle. “J-Dubs said he was a ranch hand.”

“J-Dubs?” Marty asked.

“Dr. Williams.”

“Oh.” She laughed. “No, Link does more of the outside-of-the-fence and mechanical stuff. We probably won’t see him much for a couple days once you all get settled. He’s a real cowboy.”

“Huh.” Rhett finished getting Jupiter settled in his stall and limped over to the house. Just because he was in better shape than the other three grad students didn’t mean he was in _good_ shape. Climbing the stairs onto the back porch almost did him in.

Inside, the house had a large, open area that was currently filled with crates and trunks. Rhett figured it would become their workspace once everything was put away. On one side, there was a sort of living room, with a couple busted couches and armchairs, a big bookcase filled with random books, magazines, board games, and DVDs, and a TV. The other side of the room had a long dining room table and a kitchen with a fridge, chest freezer, and propane range.

There was another new person in the kitchen, a dark skinned man in his sixties with a glorious mustache. Rhett thought he looked more like he should be on a Harley than putting together what looked like a casserole. “Um, hi,” Rhett said.

The mustache man looked up from his casserole. “Ah, you must be Samson!” he said. “Welcome. My name is Darryl, and this is my kitchen.” He gestured around with pride.

“Nice to meet you,” Rhett said, the manners his parents drilled into him still automatic despite the strange surroundings. “Samson’s still outside. I’m Rhett.”

Darryl frowned for a second, and then nodded. “The substitute, right?”

That didn’t make Rhett feel particularly good, but it was accurate. “Yeah.”

“Well, if you want to wash up before dinner, there’s a shower room behind the kitchen,” Darryl said. “You get two gallons of hot water and all the cold water you like. Toilet’s out by the barn.”

“Thanks.” Rhett would have killed for a real hot shower, but after two and a half days on the trail, anything was better than nothing. He dug a clean set of clothes out of his bag and set off. Soap and shampoo were provided, to make sure no one used anything that could impact the environment around the house.

The shower room had a bench like a gym and three stalls divided by metal panels, each with its own curtain. Rhett helped himself to a three gallon bucket from a stack by the hot water tap (the same type of bucket that had been provided for him as he went through the portal, he noticed), filled it carefully to the two gallon line, then went to figure out the best way to bathe.

Ten minutes later, Rhett was as clean as he was going to get. He dried off as best he could in the stall and went out into the main shower room to get dressed. Samson was already in one of the other stalls (Rhett could hear him hissing things like, “Oh that is _so_ cold.”) and Erica was filling her bucket. She glanced over at Rhett in his towel and immediately looked away. “I am seriously considering cutting all my hair off so I don’t have to do this again,” she said.

“I think you could pull it off.” Rhett didn’t take off his towel until she’d vanished into an empty stall. He was pretty sure they’d give up all pretence of modesty in a few days, but he wasn’t quite there yet.

As soon as Rhett dropped his towel, Link walked in. Rhett was more comfortable being naked in front of other men (after all, he’d played basketball all through high school), but did it have to be Link, of all people? Link, for his part, had apparently already given up on modestly, because all he had on was a pair of tight red boxer briefs. This confirmed something for Rhett that he’d been growing more aware of over the past few days: Link was hot as fuck.

Unlike Erica, Link didn’t look away. He gave Rhett a once over, raised his eyebrows, and went into the third stall. Rhett stood, struck dumb with astonishment, until a splash and a shriek from Erica’s stall brought him back to reality. He got dressed and hurried out of the shower room before anything weirder happened.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

One wing of the house was for the staff and the other was for the academics. There were two tiny bedrooms for the team leads, and then a larger room at the end of the building with a set of bunks on either side of a window.

“There is no way I can get into that top bunk,” Rhett said as they hauled their personal trunks into the room after dinner. “It’s just not going to happen.”

“I’ll take it,” Sasha said. “My sister and I had a bunk bed growing up. I hope you don’t snore like her, though.”

“No one’s ever said I snore.” On the other side of the room, Samson and Erica rock paper scissor’d for the bottom bunch. Erica lost. She threw her sleeping bag into the upper bunk with a curse.

The bunk was several inches too short for Rhett and the mattress, though memory foam, was thin, but it was better than sleeping on the ground next to Samson (who _did_ snore). He fell asleep quickly.


	5. Chapter 5

The academics spent the next few days recovering from their trip and unpacking and sorting through their equipment. The turbine team had multiple crates of parts and it quickly became apparent that someone had labeled them incorrectly. Sasha and Erica blamed each other. The argument got louder and louder until Darryl yelled at them from the kitchen to take it outside if they had to do that, because he didn’t allow that sort of behavior in his outpost. That was how Rhett figured out what everyone else already knew, which was that Darryl was actually in charge of the outpost. He did all the logistic and administrative duties, talked to the outside world via headquarters, and tried to keep peace in the house.

The girls went outside and Rhett could hear them squabbling for a few more minutes. He couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but they both sounded pissed. Then the discussion quieted, and five minutes later Sasha and Erica came in like nothing had happened. Rhett looked over at Andre, who was ostensibly their boss, but he just shrugged.

“Let’s not do that,” Samson muttered under his breath to Rhett.

“I don’t know enough about these to argue with you,” Rhett replied. He, Samson, and Dr. Williams were surrounded by a sea of camera equipment and associated gadgets. There were trail cams, which were simple enough, but the camera traps that used multiple beams of infrared light were much more intimidating. Rhett was terrified of setting something up incorrectly and ruining their footage.

Dr. Williams took pity on him. “Don’t worry, I know you’re new at this. I’ll give you some extra training.”

Things progressed well after that. Just as Marty had predicted, Link vanished the morning after their arrival and didn’t return until the next day. He brought three prairie chickens, which he took to the courtyard to butcher. Rhett stopped by on his way back from the toilet (one of the ways the team attempted to maintain the Novan environment was using a toilet that was not a latrine or a flush toilet. Instead each trip involved an opaque, compostable plastic bag in a process that Darryl described as “being your own dog.” They were hauled away with the rest of the trash by the supply wagon that came every other week) and watched for a moment.

“You wanna help?” Link asked with a little smirk. “Darryl will get you a knife.”

“Um, no thanks,” Rhett said.

Link laughed. “I know, I saw your face.” He seesawed the knife to cut off a wing with a bony little crunch. Rhett grimaced. “I thought you hunted.”

“I did!” Rhett protested. “My uncle always did this part, though.”

“Mm.” Link turned his attention from the chicken to Rhett. His steady blue gaze made Rhett feel like he was being sized up. He really hoped Link didn’t find him wanting. “You wanna learn?” Link asked finally.

“Uh.” If it had been anyone other than Link asking, Rhett probably would have declined. “Sure, I guess.”

Rhett managed to butcher the chicken without mangling it or getting too grossed out, and when Link said, “You did a pretty good job for a first timer,” he thought he might burst with pride.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After a few camera lessons with Dr. Williams, Rhett was almost confident enough to do it by himself. Dr. Williams arranged what he called, “A driver’s test for camera setup”. He had Marty take them out to a little spring where many different animals came to drink. Rhett set up a trail cam and a camera with two different infrared beams under Dr. Williams’s watchful eye. He gave Rhett a few tips, but said that he did well overall. Rhett felt good about that, but not as good as when Link told him he did a good job with the chicken.

When they got back to the outpost, Rhett noticed that Link’s horse was in her stall. He must have returned while they were out. Rhett wanted to hurry and find him, but he had to take care of Jupiter first. He liked Jupiter far more than the horse he used to ride at home in North Carolina, or the one he’d ridden in Iowa over the summer. The big Appaloosa was calm, steady, and _smart_. He almost seemed to know what Rhett wanted him to do before Rhett did.

Rhett heard laughter coming from the courtyard as he exited the barn. He wandered over and was astonished to see Andre, Samson, and Darryl watching as Sasha and Erica tried to teach Link some kind of intricate dance move. He wasn’t doing very well, but he was laughing anyway. Link’s hair was a mess and his cheeks were pink.

It was a completely different side of him than Rhett had seen over the past week and a half. So far, Link had mostly been absent, and when he was present, he was friendly, in an aloof kind of way. Rhett never would have expected to find him in the center of attention... dancing… and _enjoying_ it! But there he was.

“Rhett!” Erica caught sight of him and waved him over. “You have to try.”

“Okay, but what about Samson?” Rhett asked.

“I already fell on my ass,” Samson said with a scowl. 

Rhett laughed. “Wish I’d seen that.”

Link grabbed his hat off the ground and pushed his hair back under it. “I gotta get back back to work,” he said as he headed off to the barn. Rhett watched him go until Erica smacked his arm.

“Try to be less obvious,” she said. “Now start with your left foot like this and your right foot like this…”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Once Rhett was more confident in his camera skills, he and Samson began going out to set traps. Occasionally Marty accompanied them, but more often, it was Link. He knew the places where animals were likely to be, knew how to get around Nova Nebraska, and had the rifle. When Rhett made the observation that he _also_ knew how to use a rifle, Link shot back that just because he was unlikely to shoot himself in the leg while standing on solid ground didn’t mean he could hit a dire wolf from the back of a moving horse.

“Have _you_ done that?” Samson asked, wide eyed. He’d had exactly the same expression when he came outside to find Link showing Rhett how to butcher a chicken. Rhett hadn’t really grown up in the country, but compared to Samson, he was a damn hillbilly.

“Once. It was mostly a lucky shot, though,” Link admitted. “I went back and looked at the wolf, because I thought it was so weird it was by itself. It was old and skinny, so it must have been desperate. I felt kind of bad, then.”

“Did you eat it?” Rhett asked. “I know you want to eat one of every animal in the Novan kingdom.”

Link snorted a laugh. “No!”

“Did you skin it and make a cloak with the wolf head as the hood?” Samson bounced on his feet a little with how excited he was at the idea.

Link burst into laughter. “Samson, what the _fuck_?” 

“Like in Skyrim!”

“Is that a movie?”

“No, a video game.”

“Oh,” Link said. “Sorry. I don’t get a lot of references to stuff like that.”

Rhett moved his hand through the infrared beam and was pleased when he heard the camera shutter. “How much time do you spend here, anyway?”

“Too much and not enough.” Link sighed. It was the most revealing thing Rhett had heard him say about himself. “Um, when this trip is over it’ll be eight months out of this year.”

“Eight months!” Samson exclaimed.

“Four months in the spring with the botany people and whoever comes with them, four months in the fall with the biology people and whoever comes with them, two months off in the summer and the winter.” Link looked at their shocked faces. “Y’all know this is my choice, right? And they do pay me.”

“Still…” Samson shook his head and went back to his horse to get another piece of equipment. Rhett remained, looking at Link thoughtfully. Link looked up and noticed.

“What?”

Rhett shrugged. “I’ve just never met anyone like you, is all.”

Link considered that for a moment, raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement, and went off to help Samson with his horse, leaving Rhett in the middle of the waving grass and the feeling that there had been an unsaid, _I’ve met a lot of people like you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line about "being your own dog" is stolen from Mary Roach's book Packing For Mars, in reference to scientists on North Devon Island trying to preserve its Mars-like desolateness. Excellent book, highly recommended.


	6. Chapter 6

After a while, Rhett found his balance in Terra Nova. It seemed so unfair that the other grad students seemed to adapt so much easier than he did, even with their substandard outdoorsy skills. Maybe it was because they’d all been preparing for it for a year, maybe it was because Link was open and friendly and didn’t freeze them out. It made Rhett feel like a third wheel.

He was never rude to Rhett, even when they weren’t in front of the others. Link just didn’t spend any time one on one with Rhett unless he had to, and when he did, he was as aloof and closed off as Rhett thought he was at the beginning.

Otherwise, things were going well. The camera traps and trail cams caught a lot of Earthlike animals, like prairie chickens, a groundhog-type critter, and a zebra mouse (to Rhett’s genuine delight), but they also captured footage of creatures that had been extinct on Earth for millenia. The first time Rhett uploaded the data onto his laptop and saw video--actual video! That he had taken!--of a saber toothed cat drinking from a stream, he had to get up and take a walk around the house because he couldn’t hold still.

Terra Nova was nothing like he had expected. It was more like travelling in time back to the Old West than travelling to a parallel world, but that comparison wasn’t quite right, either. The Old West didn’t have the massive amount of technology North Outpost did. Cameras, laptops, radio transmitters, sensors, weather recording equipment of all types… Dr. Williams described it as “being somewhere to the left of the twenty-first century”, which Rhett thought was very apt. 

Not having internet or cell service continued to mess with him long after the rest of the weirdness of Terra Nova became mundane. Rhett used his cellphone to take notes and pictures (his camera roll was one third landscapes, one third pictures of Jupiter, and one third pictures of things like animal footprints and bird nests), which felt normal, but having to use a cable to upload his pictures onto his laptop felt foreign.

There were a lot of cables in North Outpost.

Rhett felt like they were a million miles from anywhere, and they _were_ , but they were also only three days' travel from home (less, Marty said, if you didn’t have to travel at the speed of a wagon). Every other week, the supply wagon arrived, driven by one of the Jims and accompanied by Patty or an equally badass looking man whose name Rhett never caught, carrying clean laundry, name brand snacks, and even fresh produce (but only things that didn’t contain seeds that might become invasive species).

It also brought USB drives for everyone, filled with letters, pictures, and videos from their families and friends, as well as less exciting work emails. Rhett got a nice video from his mom with his dad making a cameo in the background, a long email from Jenny, cc’d to Samson, with instructions on the kind of pictures she wanted them to take, and 23 pictures from Emmanuel of all the restaurant meals, coffees, and cocktails he’d consumed in Rhett’s absence.

Terra Nova was a strange place, and living there was a strange existence, but Rhett was beginning to fall in love with it.

The only thing he found wanting was Link’s attitude towards him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Nova Nebraska was beautiful.

Rhett grew up in the temperate forest of North Carolina, traveled to most of the ecosystems California had to offer, and spent a summer in the rolling hills of Iowa, but none of them compared to Nova Nebraska.

The air was pure, so he could see forever across the prairie. The autumn grass was turning brown and stiff, but it still looked as liquid as water when the wind blew and set it to waving. The sky was huge and clear, and one afternoon, Rhett sat on the little front porch and watched a few small clouds grow and build into a thunderhead. He could see the lightning and the sheets of rain battering the prairie, miles away.

He noticed the little things, too. Seed pods and flinty rocks, feathers and dead bugs. Rhett started collecting particularly interesting bits and pieces. He knew that he wouldn’t be allowed to take most of them home, but he hoped he could at least keep the rocks. There were some awfully pretty ones.

The thing that he liked to look at most, though, was Link. Rhett had harbored secret lustful thoughts about him since the first day at North Outpost, and the subsequent passing encounters in the shower room only encouraged them (Link, for his part, might not have liked Rhett’s personality, but he was blatant enough in checking Rhett out that Rhett caught him more than once).

It wasn’t just Link’s broad shoulders and flat stomach and perfect amount of body hair and round butt that Rhett liked. He liked how casually and confidently Link held his rifle, he liked how fluid Link was as he mounted his horse, he liked how seriously Link took his duties. Rhett pretty much always had his eye on Link when Link was around. He couldn’t help it.

Rhett had made it a month and a half without anyone calling him out. He wondered when it would happen. Everyone _had_ to have noticed, right?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rhett didn’t usually have trouble falling asleep, even through Samson’s snoring, but one night he lay awake long enough that he decided he needed a change of scenery. He slipped out of his bunk and ended up in the main room of the house. His laptop was still on the long table, so he sat and opened it. The most recent batch of camera trap pictures was still pulled up, so Rhett opened his editing software and went through them, looking for ones good enough to edit.

He’d been at it for twenty minutes before he heard footsteps coming from the staff wing. Rhett looked up to see a sleepy-looking Link, clad in sweatpants, striped green socks, and a worn t-shirt stumble in. He had an empty water bottle in his hand. Rhett nodded in acknowledgement as Link went over to the sink, but didn’t say anything.

Link filled his water bottle, but instead of heading back to bed, he wandered over to the table. “What are you working on?” he asked, accent thickened with sleep.

“Um, just fixing up some of these pictures,” Rhett replied, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“I thought they sent ‘em back for that.”

“They do.” The supply wagon took hard drives full of raw data back to UCLA to be edited by people who knew what they were doing. “These are just for me.”

“Can I see?” _That_ surprised Rhett enough that he looked up at Link. His face was puffy with sleep and his hair was all pushed up on one side, but his eyes were bright and awake.

“Sure.” Rhett tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. “But haven’t you seen all these animals before?”

Link shook his head as he sat next to Rhett. He’d never sat next to Rhett, even at the rare dinners where everyone was present at the same time. “Not close like this.”

Rhett was aware of the irony of his words, given their current situation.

He pulled up his slideshow of edited pictures and went through them with Link--bison, saiga, a few other species of antelope, some kind of weasel, the rabbit creature that Jenny was particularly interested in (it had dramatic dark patches around its eyes, so they’d taken to calling it the “eyeliner bunny”), a saber tooth cat, a few dire wolves. Link made interesting comments about some of them, and Rhett made a mental note to ask him about it again when it wasn’t the middle of the night. Surely no one knew more about the creatures of Nova Nebraska than Link Neal.

“These are pretty good pictures for someone who isn’t a photographer,” Link said. Was he _teasing_ Rhett? Rhett couldn’t tell.

“Samson gets all the credit,” Rhett answered. “I just put the camera where he says.”

“What do you really do?”

“Anatomy. I’m writing a thesis about parallel evolution in the respiratory system of the zebra mouse and a couple different Earth rodents in similar ecological niches.”

Link’s eyes grew wide. “Oh shit, _you’re_ the zebra mouse guy! I’ve had to catch so many of those little bastards…”

“Sorry!” Rhett laughed. “I’ve gone through a lot of them over the years.”

“I gotta get back to sleep.” Link pushed back his chair and stood up. “Thanks for showing those to me.”

“Yeah, anytime.” Rhett watched him disappear through the darkened doorway back to the staff wing. Then he got up and dug around in his bag until he found an unused USB drive, so he could give Link a copy of his pictures to keep.


	7. Chapter 7

If Rhett thought forty-seven pictures on a USB would change the direction of his relationship with Link, he was mistaken. Link took it with a genuine smile, but otherwise nothing between them changed. It seemed like his late night friendliness was an aberration.

Rhett tried to swallow his disappointment and get on with his life, even though it made him green with envy when he saw Link standing close to the others as he gave them shooting lessons. When he saw Link talking to Erica and Sasha about their turbine and using so much jargon that he couldn’t understand, Rhett internally berated his past self for not trying harder to better his math skills. Anything that made the other closer to Link that Rhett didn’t share made him ache inside.

And as for the things that they _did_ share? Link seemed to have zero interest in talking about them. Marty said something about Link being from the same area of North Carolina as Rhett, but when Rhett asked him about it, hoping to make a connection, Link shut his mouth and looked away. 

It was infuriating. Rhett had seen a glimpse of a different Link that late night in the kitchen, and he saw the way Link interacted with the others, so he _knew_ the way Link kept him at arm's length was the exception. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Most of the academics left the care of their horses to Marty, but Rhett liked to take care of Jupiter himself. There was a little field within the electric fence where the horses were turned out for exercise, and most days Rhett would saddle Jupiter up and ride him around a few times. The days where they went out to the camera traps were better, because Rhett got to ride through the prairie, but he longed to be able to let Jupiter loose and gallop towards the horizon.

One day about a week after the late night kitchen meeting, Rhett was in the stable brushing Jupiter after their ride. He made up a little brushing song, Train’s “Drops of Jupiter” with the words changed, that he liked to sing when he was alone with the horse. 

He was so caught up in singing to his horse that he didn’t hear someone enter the barn and approach the stall until they spoke. “Rhett, you got a minute?”

Rhett spun around with a little yelp. Link stood at the stall door with a resigned look on his face, like it pained him to ask for help. “Uh, yeah,” Rhett said as he gave Jupiter a final stroke. “What’s up?”

“Well, the turbine’s ready to install--”

“Really?” The turbine was still in pieces on the living room floor.

“They’re gonna assemble most of it on the roof,” Link said. “So I gotta set up that scaffolding. Darryl was supposed to help me, but his knee’s acting up again.”

“So you want me?”

“Yeah.” Link ticked the rest of the party off on his fingers. “Marty’s got shit to do, Darryl’s on the DL, Andre and J-Dubs ain’t here to do physical labor, the girls are working on the turbine, and I don’t think Samson knows a Phillips head from a flat head.”

“You’re probably right about that.” Samson did his best, but a lifetime of having other people paid to do things for him had left its mark. “He’s willing to learn though.”

“I ain’t got time for that,” Link said. “You in or what?”

“I’m in!” Rhett gave Jupiter a couple pats and exited the stall. Most of the scaffolding was in a storage area at the back of the barn, bundles of pipes and wooden boards, but there was a missing box of connectors. Link searched through the boxes piled against the wall, cursing, but it wasn’t there. Rhett awkwardly stood off to the side, watching.

Link took off his hat, pushed his hair back with a scowl, and put it back on. “I bet Jim Parker put it in the storm shelter, damn it.”

“There’s storage down there?” The storm shelter was a very important feature of North Outpost, given that they were in Nova Tornado Alley. It was a little off to the side of the barn, in the position supposedly least likely to be covered in debris if a storm hit.

“No!” Link stomped off towards the storm shelter. Rhett followed. “I mean, there’s survival stuff, but it’s not a storage cellar! He did this in the spring, too.” Link unlatched the steel door, flung it open, and hit a switch on the wall. A few battery powered LED lights came on. There was a crate at the bottom of the stairs. “God damn it, I knew it.”

Rhett followed him down into the storm shelter. It was a bare little room, with a bench all the way around. There were boxes and packages and jugs tucked under the benches--the survival supplies, Rhett assumed. He dearly hoped they wouldn’t have to use them. Suddenly he was desperate to get out.

“We dug this all by hand,” Link said as they hauled the crate up the steep, narrow stairs.

“‘We’?” Rhett asked.

“Yeah, me and the other construction crew guys. That was six years ago, I think. What a pain in the ass.” Link kicked the door. It slammed shut with a clang. “It’s the only permanent structure here. The environmental people _really_ didn't want to install it, but UCLA insisted.”

 _Six years_? “How old are you?”

“Twenty seven.” They’d reached the courtyard, where the rest of the scaffolding supplies were piled up. Link directed Rhett to drop the crate and then stood back, brushing off his hands with a pleased look.

Link was twenty seven? _Rhett_ was twenty seven! While he was spending all his weekends getting trashed in sports bars, Link was already in Terra Nova. True, it didn’t sound like he was doing anything glamorous, but somehow he’d managed to achieve what Rhett had only dreamed of at that point.

Rhett opened his mouth to ask more about Link’s journey to Terra Nova, but was interrupted when the back door banged open and Samson appeared. “What’s that?”

“Scaffold,” Link said. He was usually very friendly with Samson, but Rhett could tell he really, really didn’t want Samson to ‘help’.

“Can I help?”

“Uh…”

“I got it,” Rhett murmured to Link. “Yeah, dude, come help me sort this stuff out for Link.”

“Thank you,” Link muttered back, looking relieved. “I’ll pay you back later.”

“Ookaay…” What the hell did that mean? Rhett’s thoughts ran wild as he helped Samson, who was exactly as hopeless and enthusiastic as expected.

There was really nothing to do but wait and see.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link proceeded to ignore Rhett for the next several days.

Rhett, in return, tried asking the other staff members about him. This was Darryl’s first time working at North Outpost, so all he had to say was, “They said he was a hard worker and good at his job, and he is. Never have to tell him anything twice.”

Marty was more helpful. “Did you know Link’s worked here for six years?” Rhett asked when he found her behind the barn.

“Mmhm.” She pitched another pitchfork full of harvested prairie grass into a manger for the horses. “He’s about as near as a lifer as you get around here.”

Rhett frowned. _A lifer? He’s only twenty seven!_ “How did he get hired so young?” He decided to be helpful, so he grabbed the hose and started cleaning and filling the water trough.

“Thanks,” Marty said. “I know from when I got hired that they care a lot about background, but he’s never said anything other than he grew up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina.”

“What sort of stuff are they looking for?”

“They want people who can live in a place like this.” She gestured around. “Isolated, remote, not a lot of amenities. I tell you what, though, this is a hell of a lot nicer than where I grew up.”

Rhett looked around at the pole barn buildings, windmill powered water pump, and barbed wire fence. It was pretty spare. “Where was that?”

“Crow Reservation in Montana.” Marty tossed the last forkful of grass and stabbed the pitchfork into the earth. “We didn’t have indoor plumbing, but we did have a lot of horses.”

“Oh, wow.” North Outpost didn’t have an indoor toilet, but at least it had running water. “How’d you find out about this place, anyway?”

Marty laughed. “I post in this horse group on Facebook. Well, when I’m back in the world, anyway. This woman sent me a private message a couple years ago and said she knew a place that was hiring and she thought I’d be a good fit. Turned out she was the wife of somebody on the hiring committee and she was right.”

“That’s awesome!” Rhett couldn’t imagine Link posting on Facebook.

“Yeah, it really is. I love it here.” Marty spread her arms wide, leaned back, and smiled up at the sky. “This is the world my ancestors lived in, or at least as close as any of us will ever get. The bison herds... It’s sacred, and every day I am grateful and honored that I get to be here.”

“That’s really beautiful, Marty.” Rhett was a little ashamed of his reasons for wanting to visit Terra Nova after hearing that. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Yeah, no problem.” Marty pulled the pitchfork out of the ground and swung it over her shoulder. “Time to wash up for dinner.”

“Bison something again, I bet.”

“I bet you bet right.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dinner was some kind of bison fajita thing. Even with Darryl’s considerable kitchen skills, it wasn’t very good. Everyone was sick of bison, but the supply wagon wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another five days.


	8. Chapter 8

Rhett found himself in the limbo between going through the previous batch of camera data and going out to collect the next batch. It happened every week or so. Having a completely free day wasn’t that exciting when you lived, worked, and spent all your leisure time in a small compound. Rhett took to taking a book and hiding in the supply room in the barn in order to get some privacy.

He’d made himself a little nest out of a pile of cut grass and his sleeping bag and was deep into some romance novel set in the Australian Outback during the days of penal colonies. Rhett could already tell that the dashing and wrongfully accused convict would end up with the governor’s daughter, but it wasn’t like he had anything else to do.

There were footsteps outside. Link appeared in the doorway. “You busy?”

Rhett quickly put the book down into his lap. For some reason, he didn’t want Link to see what he was reading. “Why?” He didn’t want to build another scaffold or anything like that, but he didn’t want to shut Link down completely.

“Wanna go hunting?”

Rhett was dumbfounded. “What?”

“Hunting. You know--” Link mimed shooting a gun, complete with _pew_ sound effect. “I’m sick of bison. I wanna get some chickens.”

“Yeah, sure!” Rhett climbed to his feet and rolled up his sleeping bag. “I don’t have a gun, though.”

“I asked Marty if you could use her shotgun, and she said sure,” Link said. “Just get your stuff like we’re going out to the camera trap. I’ll get everything else.” He walked away, presumably off to wherever Marty stored her shotgun when she wasn’t using it. 

Rhett got a rake and cleaned the grass out of the supply room. He hadn’t been this excited since his first date in high school. He hoped this trip would end better, though.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~

Going outside the fence in Terra Nova required a lot of gear.

Rhett packed his usual basic survival stuff into his backpack: an ultralight solo tent and matching sleeping bag, extra water with purification tablets, a packet of survival foods, and a change of clothes. Additional gear could go in Jupiter’s saddlebags.

Link had the required technology: the same sort of radio trackers that Earth researchers used to track animals, which they each threaded onto their belts, and a long-range two way radio, which they could use to call Darryl if they got in trouble.

He also had Marty’s shotgun, which Rhett admired after he checked to make sure it was unloaded. Rhett had seen Marty with it, of course--she took it every time she went outside the fence to harvest grass for the horses--but he’d never seen it up close. It was beautiful, with brass studs inlaid in the well-worn stock.

“She really said I could use this?” Rhett asked.

“Yeah. Said you’re the only one of the college people she’d trust with it,” Link said. “Like, _all_ the college people, not just this batch.”

“I’m honored.” He really was, too. Rhett filled his saddlebags with the hunting supplies Link gave him, and then added the final piece: a blaze orange game vest. “Never seen you wear one of these before.”

Link snorted. “Who’s gonna shoot me out here?”

He had a point. Rhett mounted Jupiter as Link put the shotgun in his saddle holster and mounted his own horse, Biscuit. When Rhett next looked, Link’s hunting rifle had appeared across his lap, as if from nowhere.

“How many guns do you have?” Rhett asked as they left the compound.

“We each have a shotgun and a rifle. There’s a safe in the staff wing,” Link said, answering a question Rhett hadn’t even had.

Gun chat continued as they rode away from North Outpost until Rhett realized something. “Um, where are we going?”

“East.”

“But, like, how far?”

“As far as we want!” Link flung his free arm out to indicate the empty prairie before them. “There’s a good place about an hour from here, though.”

“Oh.” Rhett looked out to the horizon and then down at Jupiter. “Can we gallop?”

In response, Link grinned and dug his heels into Biscuit’s sides, leaving Rhett in his literal dust. Rhett gave Jupiter a little kick and thundered after him.

It was everything he’d dreamed of--miles of empty prairie in front of him, North Outpost shrinking behind him, a range of small bluffs off to one side, and a sky full of a great expanse of clouds above. Maybe better than his dreams, because Link was ahead of him, laughing his head off.

Rhett felt like he was flying, and he never wanted to stop.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“This part is bullshit,” Link grumbled as they searched through the fall grass for the chicken Rhett had just shot. “We need a bird dog.”

There were no dogs in Terra Nova. The possible ecological impact if they escaped was too great.

“Yeah, my uncle had this Brittany spaniel,” Rhett said. “Holly. She was amazing! Had to live in the garage, though, because she never quite figured out housetraining.”

“We had a lab mix mutt when I was growing up. Useless, but we loved him.” Link smiled a little at the memory. “Never took him hunting, though. He would have scared all the squirrels away.”

“Squirrels?” Rhett asked absently as he swept his foot through the grass. He scared some smaller bird and it flew away, twittering.

“Yeah. I liked rabbits better, but squirrels were easier to shoot when I was little. They’re not too bad, I guess.”

Rhett straightened up. “Wait, how little?”

“Um.” Link thought for a moment. “My dad started teaching me to shoot when I was nine or ten, I think? Then I got my own rifle for my birthday when I was eleven.”

“You were hunting squirrels to eat when you were eleven?”

“We were _poor_ , Rhett,” Link said, lips pressed together. “Not everyone has the privilege to hunt pheasants as a hobby.”

“We ate those!”

Link turned around and gave him a skeptical look. “Really?”

“Well, my uncle was part of this program where you could donate your extra meat to a food bank…”

“Uh huh.” Link rolled his eyes and turned back to his chicken search.

Rhett stared at his back. “What do you want from me, Link? I mean, I can’t help--”

Link whirled around and glared at him. “I _want_ you to stop treating my life like… like… like a tourist attraction!”

“ _What_?”

“This!” Link gestured around wildly, apparently meaning the entire world of Terra Nova. “I _live_ here, Rhett! This is my life, I grew up hunting because I had to, not because it was a skill to tick off my list of ‘Terra Nova skills’! And you know what? It pisses me the fuck off that you fucking did it, you had the skills so you got to come here and fulfill your childhood dream. You know what my childhood dream was? New clothes that weren’t hand me downs.”

“I came here to document animals--” Rhett started to protest before Link cut him off.

“No, you didn’t. J-Dubs said he needed someone who got along with Samson and could learn to use the cameras quickly, and that there were a few different people he could have chosen, but you could ride so at least you wouldn’t be _completely_ useless.”

“Oh.” Rhett deflated a little. He had secretly suspected his selection reason had been something like this. Dr. Williams had always been such a good mentor to him, and to hear this? It was like a needle in his heart. Rhett felt deeply betrayed, even though he knew Link’s harsh version was filtered through his anger.

Link didn’t notice. “You know, the first time I saw you ride, I thought, _Finally, one of these college people knows what he’s doing_! And then you said you did it just so you could come here. I don’t mind how hopeless most of you are, really, I swear I don’t, but ugh!”

“Link…”

“You don’t care about Terra Nova, not really.” Link found his arm out wide towards the prairie again. “Not for its own sake, at least. You just wanted to come here because it’s not Earth. It’s insulting.”

Rhett gaped at him. How was Link able to do that, to somehow pinpoint every one of his secret fears and insecurities. Every one was an additional needle in his heart. “Link, I…”

Link held up a hand, a pained expression on his face. “Don’t. Just… help me find this chicken so we can go home.” He turned back to searching through the brown grass.

Rhett stared at his back, a lump in his throat. He tried to swallow it away, failed, and went back to looking for the chicken.


	9. Chapter 9

The ride back to North Outpost was silent. Rhett didn’t know what Link was thinking about, but _he_ was thinking about something Link had said during a little secondary conflict they had while loading the hunting stuff back onto the horses.

_You’re not the first fanboy I’ve seen, and you won’t be the last._

Rhett thought about going home. It would be easy. All he would have to do is ask Darryl to call headquarters and they’d send someone to fetch him. He’d be back home in his little LA apartment in less than a week.

It wasn’t like he was even supposed to be in Terra Nova, anyway. Rhett was the replacement of a replacement, and all he did was follow Samson’s and Dr. Williams’s instructions. If he left, they could probably get along fine without him. Hell, Link could probably take his place. He went on most of the camera trap expeditions anyway.

It was taking way too long to get back to North Outpost. The ride out to the hunting spot had taken over two hours, and they’d galloped for a lot of that. Now, the horses were walking, and Rhett could not wait to return so he could go hide in his bunk, or Jupiter’s stall, or get on the roof and pretend to help Erica with the turbine.

So deep in thought was Rhett that he didn’t notice that the calm, flat gray clouds from earlier were now angry and roiling, that the light breeze that had blown the grass into gentle waves was now angry and fitful, and that the light had taken on an odd hue.

“Rhett!”

Rhett looked up with a start. Link, who had been ahead of him, was now off to the side. He’d stopped for some reason, and Rhett had ridden past. Rhett expected him to be annoyed, but instead Link’s face was pinched with worry. He had the two way radio out, antenna extended.

“What?”

“I don’t like that sky,” Link said. Rhett looked up and realized that the sky had taken on a yellowish green tint and was much brighter than it should have been, given the late hour and how thick the cloud cover was. The light had a strange watery quality, almost like they were underwater in a lake. Rhett could smell the vegetal scent of oncoming rain, and it was strong.

“What the hell is that?” Rhett asked.

“Thunderstorm sky. Maybe tornado sky.”

“ _Tornado_?” They were in the middle of the open prairie. If there was a storm, there was probably no way they could reach the storm shelter in time, even if they galloped the entire way.

Link ignored him and held up the radio. “Darryl? Darryl, are you there?” Rhett heard the beep of the response and then the mumble of Darryl’s voice. 

“You seen the sky?” 

Beep, mumble.

“Yeah, you might start thinkin’ about getting everyone ready to go downstairs.”

Beep, mumble.

“I dunno, by the bluffs probably. It’s a longer trip but there’s some shelter if we need it. It’s about to rain like hell.” It was already raining, big fat drops that promised trouble.

Beep, mumble.

“Thanks, man. You too. We’re gonna need it.” Link lowered the radio from his mouth as Rhett gaped at him.

“Link, what the _fuck_?”

“You heard me. We gotta get over to the bluffs.” Link turned Biscuit towards the bluffs and cantered towards them. Following the curve of the bluffs would take the men on a wide arc away from North Outpost before turning back towards it. Rhett’s stomach dropped. He understood Link’s reasoning, but it felt _wrong_ to head away from the storm shelter. It was already raining harder.

He and Jupiter chased after Link. When they were neck and neck with Biscuit, Rhett yelled, “Link, what are we going to _do_?”

Link glanced over at him. He still had the yellow radio in his hand, antenna out. His expression was still worried, but now it was mixed with determination. “We’re gonna do the best we can, Rh--”

_CRACK_

A bolt of lightning hit the prairie way, way, _way_ too close for comfort. There was a flash of the brightest light Rhett had ever seen and a sound more like multiple gunshots than thunder.

All four of them screamed, or at least Rhett did. He was pretty sure the others did, even though he couldn’t really see or hear them. Jupiter reared up a little but Rhett was able to keep his seat in the saddle. He blinked his watering eyes over and over, desperately trying to revive his seared retinas. “Link!” he shouted. “Link, are you okay?”

There was no answer. Rhett wiped a mix of tears and rainwater from his face. He could see a little now, and there was no sign of Link or Biscuit anywhere. Rhett twisted around in the saddle, trying to spot anything. He caught sight of something moving--Biscuit, running away at top speed.

Her saddle was empty.

“Shit.” Rhett dismounted Jupiter. “Stay,” he told the horse sternly, as if that would work. He started walking in the direction that Biscuit had taken off in, calling for Link. There was a weak reply from the tall grass. Rhett spread the blades and found Link lying on his side on the ground. “Oh god, Link, are you okay?”

“I dunno,” Link replied shakily as Rhett knelt by his side. “My hip’s fucked up.”

Rhett looked up at the sky. The watery light was gone, it was nearly dark as night, and the rain was pounding harder than ever. There was something small and round on Link’s side that stood out against his dark shirt. It was a hailstone the size of a pea. Rhett let it melt between his fingers as he asked, “Like broken fucked?”

“I dunno,” Link said again. “But help me up, because we can’t stay here.”

“But…”

“Rhett!” 

So Rhett helped Link take off his backpack (“Just leave it,” Link said) and put an arm around him. The swallowed half scream Link made as Rhett pulled him to his feet made Rhett feel almost as sick as he had when he crossed through to portal. They were stumping away towards the bluffs, Rhett half carrying Link, when Rhett realized something. “Jupiter!”

“He’s probably following us,” Link said through clenched teeth. Rhett glanced back and saw that Link was right. The big Appaloosa was trailing forlornly behind them. “Rhett, listen to me. You can’t worry about him, okay? We have to keep going, even if he’s not there.”

“Okay.” Rhett knew better than to argue. Link was right, anyway. The rain was pouring, actually _pouring_ like someone in the clouds had a bucket, and they were still getting pelted with hail. The wind was worse, too. The bluffs seemed very, very far away. Rhett didn’t think they’d get there anytime soon. 

There was another flash of nearby lightning and an almost immediate _crack_ of thunder.

“Fuck _this_ ,” Rhett said. He leaned over and picked up Link in a bridal carry, ignoring Link’s scream of pain, and ran towards the bluffs as quickly as he could.


	10. Chapter 10

The ground at the base of the bluffs was sandy soil covered in scrubby little plants. Rhett found a spot with a little hollow and tucked Link underneath for what scant protection it offered.

He looked bad in the glimpses Rhett got during the flashes of lightning. Link’s eyes were clenched tight and he moved his lips incessantly. Rhett couldn’t hear what Link was saying over the storm, but he thought it might have been a prayer.

Rhett curled himself into a ball and tried to fit under the overhang. He’d seen storms before, of course, but always from indoors, and never on the plains. The wind simply did not stop. Rhett didn’t know if it was a tornado or what, but he’d once been on the outskirts of a hurricane, and he would have sworn that this was worse. He remembered reading about the Beaufort Wind Scale, a system for estimating wind speed by observing surrounding conditions that started at “Smoke rises vertically” and ended at “Devastation”. It was hard to tell when the only things around him were grass and rocks, but Rhett suspected they were pretty close to the Devastation end. He hoped everyone at North Outpost was in the storm shelter, and wondered how the pole barn buildings were faring.

The little hollow offered some shelter from the wind, but none from the rain or the hailstones. They were now the size of marbles and hit with bruising force. Rhett was struggling to pull up the hood of his hunting vest when he caught sight of Link. Rhett had stupidly put his back towards the shelter of the hollow, leaving Link facing the elements. He couldn’t roll over due to his injured hip and had his arms clutched over his head to protect it.

“Ah, shit,” Rhett muttered. He wrenched the hood from where it was trapped between his back and backpack, pulled it up, and lay in front of Link, protecting the other man with his body. Link grabbed the front of the vest and buried his face in Rhett’s chest, and Rhett put his hand on the back of Link’s head. It might never happen again, but at that moment, _he_ was the capable protector.

Maybe the storm lasted half an hour. Maybe it lasted two hours. Rhett’s world dwindled to a tiny point: Link, in his arms. Link might hate his guts, but he was solid and _there_ and he was the only thing linking Rhett to reality.

The storm passed eventually, as they always did. Rhett slowly surfaced from wherever he’d gone during the storm to find that they were lying in a shallow puddle at the base of a bluff. There were melting hailstones scattered about and he still had Link clutched to his chest. Link shivered violently.

“Hey.” Rhett reluctantly let Link go and patted him on the shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s get you out of this puddle and somewhere dry.”

Link pulled his face back. It was pinched with pain and unhappiness. “There’s nowhere dry around here.”

“I have my little tent.” Rhett silently praised the persuasive saleswoman at REI who’d convinced him to get a water resistant pack. He’d inwardly cursed her at the register when all his purchases were rung up, but now he vowed to track her down and buy her a pizza or something. Thanks to her, he had a tent, a sleeping bag, _and_ dry clothes. He got up and dropped his pack on the wet, flattened grass a little ways from the bluff before coming back to Link, who was still lying on his left side in the puddle. “Um. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Well, you’re gonna.” Link rolled onto his back with a wince. “Just drag me.”

Rhett hesitated. “Is anything broken, do you think?”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s just a flesh wound.” Link moved his leg a little even though it obviously pained him. “Let’s go.”

Rhett made a face but grabbed Link under his arms anyway. Link released another of those awful half-screams, but at least he was out of the puddle. Rhett laid him on the grass next to his one man tent, which more or less popped itself up when he pulled it out of the bag. He silently praised both the tent designers and the REI saleswoman. “Okay. So. I have a sleeping bag and a set of dry clothes.”

“Okay.” Link stared up at the sky. It was still covered in clouds, but there was a hint of early evening light. There were still a few light drops of rain falling occasionally. Link had lost his hat and glasses somewhere along the way, his teeth were chattering, and his lips were blue with cold. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead, and Rhett suppressed the urge to reach over and brush it back.

“So I thought you could put them on and get warmed up.”

“What about you? Are you just gonna sit out here soaked and get hypothermia?”

“Uh.” Rhett hadn’t really thought about that. “I mean, that tent isn’t built for two.”

Link sighed. “What clothes do you have?”

Rhett dug through the bag. “Let’s see. Thermal shirt, underwear, pants, hoodie, and socks.”

“Alright, here’s what we’re going to do.” Link was back to being the practical, capable leader. “I get the hoodie, the underwear, and the socks. You get the pants and the shirt, and we share the sleeping bag.”

“Share the…?”

“Rhett!” Link shot him an exasperated glare. “Darryl knows we’re out here, and he kind of knows where we are, but we have no idea how badly North Outpost was hit. Who knows how long it’s going to be before they can come look for us? Or _if_. It’s not that cold now, but we’re soaked and it’s getting dark.” He pushed himself up and took off his hunting vest.

“I… okay. Do you need help?”

“Yeah, with my pants. I’ll do the underwear myself, though.” Link already had his shirt off. He unzipped his fly and gingerly lifted his hips to push them down past his butt. Rhett sucked in his breath as Link’s swollen, purpling thigh was revealed. “That bad, huh?”

“Yeah.” Rhett struggled to peel the soaked fabric off without hurting Link too much, and then Link was sitting nearly naked on the wet grass, looking very pale and very thin. He scooted himself backward into the tent, leaving Rhett alone on the prairie with his disjointed thoughts.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Fitting two large men into a single sleeping bag would have been hard enough without said sleeping bag being located in a tent that was small enough that Rhett couldn’t actually stretch out fully without pushing his head into the nylon. The intense bewilderment that he felt didn’t help at all.

Rhett knew he had a bit of a crush on Link, and more than once he’d imagine scenarios that ended up with them in bed together, but this hadn’t been one of them. Link was pissed and injured, Rhett was wildly out of his depth, and they were both cold and clammy.

“You better hurry up or you’re gonna get wet again,” Link said from inside the tent, where he was lying on his uninjured side on the unzipped sleeping bag.

Rhett shook his head to clear it. “Okay, just a second.” The little tent was bright blue, but the grass was tall enough to nearly block it from view. Rhett took one of the orange hunting vests and threw it up at the bluff until it caught on one of the scrubby trees that grew out of the vertical wall. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

“So, um, how do you want to do this?” Rhett asked as he crawled into the tent. It was so small that it meant he more or less crawled on top of Link, which was just horribly awkward, and it was about to get worse, because Link’s answer was:

“You’re gonna have to be the big spoon, because I’m not moving anymore.”

“Ah.” Rhett kind of wished the storm had blown him away, because he was actively dying. The tent was too small, the sleeping bag was too snug, Link was too solid and he was wearing Rhett’s underwear and his hair smelled like rainwater and mud and… 

“Is it okay if I--” Rhett moved his arm over Link’s waist.

“Yeah.”

So Rhett tucked his arm around Link and settled in closer. They were both still cold and shivering, but at least they were dry. He tried to relax, but his thoughts were caught up in a swirl of _I like Link_ and _Link does not like me_ and _we are sharing a sleeping bag_ and _god I hope everyone else is okay_ and _I hope Jupiter and Biscuit are okay_ and…

“Try not to freak out so much, okay?” Link wasn’t using his capable guy-who-knows-what-to-do voice. This tone was something softer, more gentle.

“What?”

“I can tell you’re thinking like crazy back there,” Link said.

“Uh…” Did he know Rhett was thinking about him?

“But we’re actually in a really good spot,” Link continued. “Darryl knows we’re out here, and he even knows we’re by the bluffs. There’s a radio receiver in the storm shelter and we still have the radio transmitters. And I’m sure Darryl called headquarters before going down into the shelter, and even if he didn’t, they’d know to come anyway.”

 _Oh_. “What if headquarters got hit? The portal…”

“Portal’s anchored on Earth. Headquarters could be completely gone and it would still be there.”

Rhett knew that, of course he did. “Yeah, okay.”

“Just try to get some rest, okay?” Link said, still gentle. “All we can do for now is wait, anyway.”

“Okay.” Rhett tried to make himself relax. “Thank you.”

“‘Thank you’?” Link sounded surprised. “For what?”

“Savin’ my ass, I guess.”

Link snorted a laugh. “Rhett, you saved _my_ ass today. Quite possibly literally, depending on how big that bruise gets.”

“Huh.” Rhett considered that. “Guess I did.”

“Mmhmm.” Link snuggled a little closer to him and relaxed in a I’m-going-to-sleep-now way.

But Rhett, try as he might, couldn’t join him.


	11. Chapter 11

Darkness fell. Real darkness, not storm induced darkness. Rhett wondered if anyone would come looking for them before morning. They still had the radio transmitters, but he didn’t know how accurate they were. Accurate enough to guide a horse and rider across the prairie, even in pitch black? Or were they more of a “he’s over in that general direction” kind of accuracy?

If someone _was_ coming to get them, Rhett wanted to make it as easy as possible for them to be found. There was a headlamp in his backpack, and if he turned it on and hung it from one of the little loops in the side of the tent, it would turn the entire tent into a glowing blue beacon.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t thought of this before getting tucked into the sleeping bag, and now the backpack was somewhere behind his knees with the rest of their wet gear. Rhett tried to very carefully remove his arm from around Link’s middle so he could twist around to grab the bag, but of course he wasn’t careful enough. “What are you doing?” Link asked groggily.

“Hang on.” Rhett unzipped the sleeping bag a little and leaned over. He scrabbled around in the bottom of his bag and pulled out the headlamp. It claimed to have a battery life of 30 hours and since Rhett had never used it, he figured it would last the rest of the night. He clicked it on and squinted in the suddenly blinding light. “So they can see us if they come looking tonight,” Rhett said as he hung it up.

“That’s clever,” Link murmured. He hissed in discomfort as Rhett snuggled back down in the sleeping bag.

“Sorry.” Rhett put his arm back around Link’s middle. He wouldn’t really describe their setup as “warm and cozy”, although it was certainly warmer and cozier than the hollow under the bluff had been. The sleeping quarters at North Outpost weren’t heated, but if the main living area was still standing, hopefully the propane heater would be on. Rhett could really go for a couple gallons of hot water, too.

Having his arm around Link was nice, though, even if it was just until they weren’t in danger of hypothermia. Rhett didn’t know what they’d do once dawn rolled around, but it probably involved putting on wet clothes and struggling towards North Outpost (with or without rescuer help) and this nice moment with a softer, gentler Link would be gone.

Rhett tried to extend it a little, now that Link was awake. “How’s your leg?”

Link sighed. “I dunno. Hurts like fuck.” There was a rustling and Rhett could feel him reach down to touch his leg. “Feel how hot it is.”

Rhett raised his eyebrows. How _intimate_. He carefully laid his fingertips on Link’s leg. It was warm and oddly squishy. “Eugh.”

“Yeah.” Link was silent for a few moments. “I think it’s bad. Like, I got kicked by a horse a couple years ago and it didn’t hurt this much.”

“I’m sorry.” Rhett put his arm back around Link. Outside the tent, the now-familiar nighttime noises of Nova Nebraska were well underway. There was one critter that made an up-and-down trill that Rhett particularly liked, but he’d never been able to figure out what made it. A cricket-like bug? Some toadlike amphibian? A night bird?

“Thanks.” Link sighed. “I shouldn’t have said all that stuff earlier.”

The needle-in-the-heart feeling came back. “It’s true, though,” Rhett said.

“Yeah, but it’s not _bad_.” Link sighed again. “Look, I see all these college people come through, and a lot of them are just so damn single minded.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like Erica! She loves that damn turbine. She could be installing it on Earth Nebraska and she’d be just as happy.”

“Sasha, too,” said Rhett. 

“Nah, she’s not quite as bad. But my point is, that kind of person doesn’t care about Terra Nova, not really. Then you have the Samson sorts, where they really, _really_ love Terra Nova, but just, like, one specific thing.”

“The eyeliner bunny.” In fairness to Samson, he loved all rabbits. His laptop background was a glamour shot of him in an ugly Christmas sweater holding his pet rabbit. Rhett laughed. “God, he was so upset when you brought some back for dinner.”

“Yeah, well, I let him take like a million pictures, and then he ate the stew anyway,” Link said, a little smugly. “So that’s the two main types of college people. Well, professors, but they don’t count.”

“Okay.”

“Sometimes we get fanboys.They usually get weeded out in the psych tests--” Rhett felt a slight twinge of shame and embarrassment. That was probably where he’d been eliminated. “--but once in a while they get through. Usually they’re just kind of cringey, but a couple years ago there was this woman who had it so built up in her head that she had some kind of breakdown while we were on the way to the outpost.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeahhh… that was a mess.” Link shook his head. “But almost none of them actually _prepare_ for being out here, other than the basic stuff. I mean, look at how much the others suffered on the way out here.”

“I suffered, too,” Rhett said.

“Yeah, you were out of practice, but you didn’t ride like a sack of potatoes!” Link exclaimed. “A big part of my job is keeping y’all alive and well and let me tell you, any little bit helps.”

“So, I realize I was being kind of a classist asshole earlier, which I’d like to apologize for, by the way,” Rhett said. “But why were you so upset about me being a fanboy?”

“Ugh.” Rhett imagined the face Link had to be making. “It’s not really about that. So the college people come and then they go, and I’m probably never going to see them again, right? It’s just a revolving door.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So I try to be friendly but not too involved, you know?”

“Okay…” Rhett wasn’t really sure where this was going.

“So…” Link sighed again. The situation seemed to have him in a pensive mood. “I could tell right away that I’d like you and I didn’t want to get close and then have you go away.”

Rhett’s mouth dropped open. “ _That’s_ what your deal was?”

“More or less.” Link sounded a little ashamed.

“So why are you telling me this now?”

“Because I’m leaving,” Link said, resigned. “Even if North Outpost isn’t that damaged, which I very much fucking doubt, I need to go to the hospital.”

“I don’t want you to leave.” It came out of Rhett’s mouth unprompted, completely bypassing his brain. He cringed as soon as he said it.

“You’re probably leaving, too.”

“I don’t want that, either.” Rhett was completely taken with Terra Nova. It was completely different and better than anything he’d ever dreamed as an internet fanboy.

Link didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Just… try to get some sleep, okay?” he said finally, and shifted deeper into the sleeping bag.

The conversation was clearly over. “Okay,” Rhett said, despite having a million new things to think about. He probably wasn’t capable of sleep, but he closed his eyes and tried to relax anyway.


	12. Chapter 12

Rhett must have been able to fall asleep at some point, because he awoke to the tent being unzipped and someone yelling his and Link’s names.

“Oh thank god!” Marty said as she blinded them with her headlamp. “We were so worried…” She took Link’s face in both hands and gave him a big kiss on the forehead. After a small pause, Rhett got one, too. “Are you okay? Anybody hurt?”

“Just my dignity,” Rhett replied. Marty smiled a little at that.

“My leg’s messed up,” Link said.

“Broken?”

“Might as well be.”

“Did Biscuit throw you?” Marty asked. “She was waiting outside the fence when we came out of the shelter. Not a scratch on her.”

Link nodded and put both hands over his face and exhaled a long, shuddery breath. Rhett suddenly realized how worried about Biscuit he must have been. Link spent almost all day, every day with his horse. He must miss her terribly when he was back on Earth.

“Any sign of Jupiter?” Rhett asked. He wasn’t hopeful.

Marty shook her head. “I’m sorry, Rhett.”

“I… thank you.” That hurt more than anything else that had happened that day.

Marty didn’t mention anything about the shared sleeping bag, so Rhett just unzipped it and found Dr. Williams waiting outside. He was astonished when the old man, who had always been the very picture of formality, pulled him into a hug.

They’d brought along two of the other horses, and while Rhett could ride despite how sore and stiff he was, there was no way Link was getting on a horse. Luckily, someone had foreseen this possibility, and the small cart Marty used to haul grass was hooked up behind one of the horses with a makeshift harness. It was going to be a bumpy, uncomfortable ride, but it was better than the alternatives.

Link said there was absolutely no way he could walk, let alone climb into the cart, so there was some discussion among the ambulatory members of the party before he interrupted. “Rhett can just pick me up.”

Dr. Williams and Marty turned their headlamps towards Rhett, who shrugged. “I did it yesterday.”

And so Rhett lifted Link, sleeping bag and all, and put him in the cart as gently as possible. Link almost, but not quite, managed not to scream. Marty sat on the edge of the cart and talked to him quietly while Rhett and Dr. Williams packed everything up. Rhett put his wet socks and boots back on, and they were on their way.

He had no idea what time it was. It was full dark on the prairie, no moon, with only the light of their headlamps for illumination. Above, the sky was filled with a million, a billion, a trillion stars. Rhett had never seen so many on Earth, even when he was in the middle of nowhere. He could see the Milky Way and a few familiar constellations. They weren’t the same stars as the ones he could see from Earth, of course, anymore than Terra Nova was the same as Earth, but it was a bit of comfort after his hellish day.

It took over two hours at their slow pace to reach North Outpost. Rhett was dismayed to see that there were no lights on. He asked Dr. Williams how bad the damage was.

“All the stuff on the roof is gone, solar panels, turbine, everything.” Sasha, Erica, and Andre must be so disappointed. “The entire roof over the staff wing is gone, and so is part of the roof over the living room. Barn’s pretty torn up, too, and some of the horses are hurt. Darryl called headquarters before it really hit, so they’ve already sent a team out. They should be here in a couple days.”

“Damn,” Rhett said. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

Dr. Williams hadn’t mentioned that the propane stove and heater were out of commission, too, so there was no heat or hot water. Darryl had a little camping stove out, though. Once Rhett had helped carry Link inside and deposited him onto the couch, he gratefully accepted a big bowl of chicken noodle soup before heading off to his own bunk to sleep, alone.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

No one woke Rhett the next morning, so he didn’t get up until after noon. Link was still asleep on the couch and no one else was in the room, so Rhett went into the courtyard, where he washed up at the still-working hand pump by the barn.

The destruction of North Outpost was sickening to behold. The roof of the barn was torn completely off along with part of the roof of the house and all of the equipment that had been mounted on it. Debris was strewn all over the compound, and Rhett could see more out on the prairie. They’d been so careful to avoid contamination, and now there were Earthly materials scattered everywhere. It made the ecologist in him want to cry.

Darryl had set up some kind of cooking station with pots and pans balanced on rocks over an open fire and made Rhett a meal that was surprisingly decent, for all that it featured the bison that everyone was sick of. He then accosted Rhett with a stack of paper on a clipboard, which turned out to be a bunch of incident report forms.

It took Rhett nearly two hours to fill everything out, a large chunk of which was spent figuring out how to describe sharing a sleeping bag in a way that made it sound as professional as possible. He finally decided to spin it as, “Link told me and I figured he knows more about it than me, so I did.”

When he went back inside to get a jacket, Link was awake. When Rhett asked how he was doing, Link responded with, “Pretty fuckin’ great,” in a way that made it clear how little he wanted to socialize. Rhett brought him a bottle of water and left him alone.

Everyone else was outside cleaning up. Rhett ached all over, especially his back from hauling Link around, so he ended up in the barn. Marty was in there, trying to restore normality. Rhett walked around and greeted each horse: Mickey, Pepper, Max, Biscuit, Roxie, Nemo, Snickers, and Sparky. Jupiter was still missing. There was a large piece of twisted corrugated roofing in his stall. Rhett stared at it for a moment before hauling it out. Jupiter would have a clean stall to come back to if he had anything to say about it.

Marty didn’t say anything to him until he was done. She was tending to her horse, Pepper, who had a large, shallow cut on her flank. In the dark last night, Rhett hadn’t noticed that she was riding someone else’s horse.

“He’s probably fine,” she said when Rhett walked over. “It was just wind, mostly. Nothing to hurt him out on the grass.”

“But he’s lost,” Rhett replied mournfully.

“Jupiter’s smart. He’ll find his way back eventually.” Marty applied a long gauze bandage to Mickey’s side and had Rhett hold it as she taped it in place. 

“I hope so.” Rhett helped her tend to the other horses. Marty told him that there would be a vet coming with the rescue wagon, because there were procedures drawn up for these sorts of things. A bad storm in Nova Nebraska was, given enough time, a near certainty. 

There would also be a clean up team and a doctor, which was a relief. Link obviously needed medical attention, and Rhett wouldn't mind having someone look at his back. It had never been so stiff.

Rhett spent the rest of the day helping clean up as best he could. He wanted to talk to Link more, but Link just wanted to be left alone. Rhett got the idea that Link _hated_ showing weakness and having it on full display just made him unhappier.

Maybe they could talk when they were both back on Earth.


	13. Chapter 13

The two-way radio crackled to life that evening a little after sundown. Darryl snatched it up from the table. “This is North Outpost.”

Everyone shut up and eavesdropped. Headquarters had indeed sent a rescue group. In fact, they’d sent two--a smaller, quicker medical team to treat and evacuate any injured team members, and a larger, slower clean up and salvage team. The medical team was close enough to be within radio range and would arrive sometime around mid-day tomorrow.

Darryl kicked everyone out so Link could talk to the doctor in privacy. Rhett ended up at the barn, as usual. He was walking around, greeting the horses, when he heard something coming from the supply room. It sounded like someone crying.

Rhett knocked gently. “Hello?”

“Yeah, come in.” Rhett opened the door and found Erica sitting on the floor. She wiped her eyes. “Oh, hey, Rhett.”

Rhett sat across from her in the dimly lit room. “What’s wrong?”

She leaned forward and handed him a broken little piece of metal. It was a sinuous shape and had a honeycomb texture, as if miniature bees had taken up modernist sculpture. Rhett held it up and peered through the tiny hexagons at the sliver of quickly dimming sky through the door. “I spent the last three years working on that turbine. All those titanium inner parts--” here Erica nodded at the little metal piece. “--I designed and printed myself. And now…” She burst into tears again.

Rhett scooted across the dusty floor until he sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” she replied thickly.

“Are you going to make another one?” Rhett asked.

“I dunno. That motherfucker was _expensive_. We got a special grant to install it here, so that’s gone. I know there’s insurance, but…” Erica sighed and laid her head on Rhett’s shoulder. “What about you? I know it wasn’t really your project, but did you get enough of what you needed?”

“I guess,” Rhett said. “I mean, there’s so little known about the animals here that _anything_ is valuable. We did get pictures of a couple critters that even Link and Marty didn’t recognize, so that’s something.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Erica said. “What are you going to do about Link?”

“ _Do_ about him?”

“Yeah.” Erica picked up her head and looked at Rhett. “You gonna let him know you’re into him before he goes back to North Carolina?”

“I’m not--wait, North Carolina?” Rhett asked, distracted from his knee-jerk denial.

“Yeah, I think he lives there. He made a joke about still living with his parents a while back.”

“Huh.” It made sense. There was no real reason for Link to live in LA. “I don’t know how’d he’d take it if I did.” Apparently Rhett was just going to be transparent. The whole Terra Nova trip was already a disaster. Acknowledging an inconvenient crush couldn’t hurt.

“Well, I’m not going to tell you what to do, but when he thinks no one is paying attention, he watches you.”

“Really?” That was easy to believe, though, given how Link looked at him in the shower room.

“Yeah. And he says good things about you when you aren’t around, like how sweet it is that you love your horse so much.”

“ _Really_?”

Erica laughed. “Well, he didn’t phrase it like that.”

“I bet.” Rhett took his arm back from Erica’s shoulder. “I hope Jupiter comes back soon.”

“Me, too. He’s a good boy.” Erica usually spoke of the horses as if they were large dogs. “We should get back inside. It’s getting pretty dark.”

“Okay.” Erica helped haul Rhett up. He trailed after her towards the house, thinking about what she’d said.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

There was a card game going at the long table by the light of a couple battery operated lanterns. Erica sat down and waited to get dealt in, but Rhett went over to the couch and sat down in a nearby chair. Link had his own battery operated lantern and was reading a ratty paperback that Rhett recognized. It was the Australian convict romance novel. Rhett suppressed a smile. “How’s the leg?”

“See for yourself.” Link set down the novel and flipped back the sleeping bag he was using as a blanket. Rhett sucked in his breath at the sight of Link’s leg. It was an angry reddish purple and grotesquely swollen.

“Holy shit!”

“I know. It looks like I have a fucking ham for a leg. Hurts like crazy, too.” Link covered it back up with a scowl. “I talked to the doctor over the radio. He said it doesn’t sound broken, but the swelling is concerning, so I should try not to move.”

“ _I’m_ concerned,” Rhett said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“I mean… it’s not that surprising. If this happened on Earth, I’d have already been to the ER,” Link pointed out. “At least you didn’t get hurt. My career here may be over, but at least it can end with 100% of college people returned safely.” There was more than a hint of pride in his voice. Link took his job seriously.

Rhett didn’t know what to say to that. Link loved Terra Nova more than anyone else, with the possible exception of Marty. The thought that he might not be able to return hurt Rhett. He couldn’t imagine how Link must be feeling.

“Is there anything you’re looking forward to, going back?” Rhett asked. “Even a little?”

“A hot shower,” Link said firmly. “Sasha got me some warm water and a washcloth and helped me clean up a little, but I can’t wait to get _clean_ clean, you know?”

“Yeah.” Rhett had wanted a hot shower since his first day in Terra Nova.

“And then I want to eat a bunch of chicken wings. _Not_ prairie chicken.”

“That sounds amazing.” Personally Rhett had been looking forward to a basket of burnt ends from a little hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint in his neighborhood, but wings would be fine, too. “I bet Darryl could make pretty good prairie chicken wings.”

Link shrugged. “Probably.”

“How long are you going to stay in LA?”

“I dunno, depends on how long the postmortem for all this takes. I can’t wait to spend all day every day in meetings.” Link snorted at Rhett’s surprised expression. “I’m not just a dumb hick, Rhett.”

“I didn’t--” Rhett began to protest, and then thought better of it. “I just can’t imagine you in an office, is all.”

“Trust me, I have a hard time believing it myself,” Link said. “It’s the price I pay for getting to come here, I guess.” He yawned. 

Rhett yawned, too. “Guess I’m gonna head to bed.”

“‘Kay.” Link picked his romance novel back up. “Night, Rhett.”

“Goodnight.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rhett lay in his bunk and thought about what Erica had said. There was something there between him and Link. It was so obvious that everyone could see it. The only surprise was that no one had ever brought it up with him before.

But if there was something there, if they tried, then what? Rhett was almost certainly never going to return to Terra Nova. In a few days, he’d be back on Earth, and while Link might stay on Earth for a while, eventually he’d return to Terra Nova. Long distance relationships were hard enough when people weren’t in different dimensions.

That was jumping the gun, though. Just because Link was letting Rhett in a little didn’t mean he wanted a relationship. Maybe he just wanted a friend. Maybe he just wanted a hookup. Maybe he just wanted someone to talk to while he was injured.

Rhett wouldn’t mind any of those with the Link who was capable and confident and galloped across the prairie with a rifle across his lap, but the newer Link, the one who was soft and gentle and let Rhett hold him close… Rhett didn’t think he’d be satisfied with just a hookup or friendship with that Link. He wanted more.


	14. Chapter 14

The doctor arrived a little after 9am the next morning, accompanied by wagonmaster Patty and the shorter Wagon Jim. Instead of the usual massive supply wagon, he had a lighter, sleeker wagon filled with some emergency supplies, including a couple solar generators. Sasha and Erica immediately grabbed those to set up, delighted to have a new toy to play with. Patty went off to the barn to talk horses with Marty, and Darryl, Andre, and Dr. Williams met with Jim to discuss logistics.

Samson had been inside while all this was happening, and he came out to tell Rhett that the doctor wanted to check out his back. Rhett went in and found the doctor talking to Link, who was smiling. It was the first time Rhett had seen him smile since before the storm, and it made him smile in turn.

Link heard Rhett enter and twisted around to look at him. “Rhett! It’s not broken!”

“I said _almost_ certainly not broken,” corrected the doctor in exasperation. He turned his attention to Rhett. “Is there somewhere where I can examine you privately?”

“Uh, I guess so, but why not in here?”

“I still have to abide by HIPAA regulations,” the doctor said. “I can do it here if you don’t mind Link being here.”

“I mean, he’s been here the whole time anyway.” Rhett took off his shirt at the doctor’s request. “What other laws apply here?”

“Terra Nova is governed by the laws of the United States and California,” Link said from the couch, in the tone of one reciting a memorized fact.

“What about hunting seasons?” Rhett asked. The doctor prodded a particularly sore spot. “Ow!”

“Sorry,” the doctor murmured.

“None of these animals are described in any laws from Earth.” Rhett couldn’t see Link, because the doctor had him bent forward, but he could tell Link was smirking.

“Oh, that is such bullshi--” Rhett cut himself off as the doctor started laughing. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re right, it is bullshit,” the doctor agreed. “Don’t let the news out or you’ll have every hunter in the States beating down your door. Now, does it hurt if you move your arm like this?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Patty exchanged her four horses for four of Marty’s horses while Darryl and Samson got Link loaded into the little wagon under the doctor’s watchful eye. Rhett hadn’t been deemed injured enough to evacuate right away, so he was staying behind until the main relief party came in the next day or two. 

Rhett was the last one to say goodbye to Link before he left. “I’ll see you in LA, okay?” he said to Rhett.

A smile spread over Rhett’s face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Link smiled too, and he held out a hand. Rhett didn’t know if he should shake it or clasp it or what, so he just sort of grasped it, making Link laugh. “Let me know when you get back. J-Dubs has my number.”

It was strange to think of texting with Link. “I will.” With that Link was gone. Rhett leaned on a fencepost and watched until the wagon was no longer visible.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett spent most of the next two days on the couch vacated by Link, hoping his back would heal up a little before the three day trip back to headquarters. He was probably going to end up riding in the wagon, though, which was fine. Jupiter still hadn’t appeared, and Rhett didn’t really want to ride any of the other horses.

After an incredibly boring day and a half, the team from headquarters arrived. Rhett was astonished by how many people and horses there were--the male wagonmaster, two wagons packed with supplies, one driven by the taller Wagon Jim and the other by a stranger, six additional people on horseback, and a few extra horses.

One of the extra people was the vet and the others were the cleanup team. They’d be staying at North Outpost and working with Darryl and Marty once the UCLA teams left. In the meantime, they began unloading the wagons before reloading with the scientific gear. Marty had packed Link’s things in his trunk after he left, and that was loaded too.

There was fresh food and _beer_ in the wagons. It wasn’t cold, but between the beer and the bonfire the cleanup crew made, a pretty good party developed. Rhett had nice time and enjoyed the food, but he couldn’t entirely get into the party spirit.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next morning at dawn, the college people said their goodbyes and mounted their horses. Marty gave Rhett a big hug and a kiss on the cheek before he climbed into the wagon. Everyone else got to ride away from North Outpost, but Rhett’s seat in the wagon faced backwards, so he got to watch it shrink until it finally disappeared behind a hill.

The wagon wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t as bad as Western novels had led Rhett to believe. Of course, prairie schooners didn’t have the advantages of leaf springs, shock absorbers, or rubber tires.

It was easy to zone out with nothing to look at other than the endless sea of grass and the occasional bluff or herd of animals in the distance. Six hours later, Rhett was thinking about a hunting technique Marty told him about--before horses came to the New World, her ancestors would drive a herd of buffalo, _on foot_ , over a cliff, where other hunters were waiting at the bottom to spear them. It struck Rhett as being both incredibly efficient and incredibly wasteful at the same time. Sure, they would use every part of a buffalo, but how _many_ could they use at one time?

He was startled out of his thoughts by Wagon Jim saying his name. He handed the two way radio back to Rhett. “It’s for you.”

Beep. “Hello?”

Beep. “Hey, it’s Marty. Just wanted you to know Jupiter’s back. He’s okay aside from needing a bath.”

Relief washed over Rhett. 

Beep. “Oh my god, Marty, I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”

Beep. “Yeah, I thought you’d want to know. And you know what else?”

Beep. “What?”

Beep. Marty laughed. “My rifle was still strapped to the saddle.” 

Rhett had completely forgotten about Marty’s rifle. “That’s awesome. It’s a beautiful gun.”

Beep. “Yeah, it was my grandfather’s, so I’m glad to have it back. I’ll send you some pictures of Jupiter with the next supply wagon, okay?”

Beep. “Yeah! Thank you so much, Marty.”

Beep. “Take care, Rhett.”

Rhett handed the radio back up to Jim. Her grandfather’s rifle? Marty had trusted him enough to let him use it, and although it hadn’t been his fault that it got lost, it hadn’t even occurred to Rhett to apologize, and Marty hadn’t said a word. He felt like an asshole. Rhett promised himself that he’d send her a letter of apology on the next supply wagon.


	15. Chapter 15

The rest of the journey back was just as boring. Rhett thought about Link a lot, how his leg was doing, how he was doing in LA in general, how he might feel about Rhett. It just made him want to see Link even more.

Headquarters had only suffered minimal damage in the storm, but there was a lot of hustle and bustle. Rhett and his colleagues were taken to the portal and sent back one by one. The whispery, crackly noise and faint gunpowder scent were the same, but Rhett felt only a brief wave of nausea as he went through.

And then he was back on Earth. The first thing he noticed was how ugly the fluorescent lighting was. The second thing he noticed was the smell. 

“Ugh, what _is_ that?” Rhett exclaimed.

The guy monitoring the portal laughed as he ushered Rhett off to the side so the next person could come through. “That, my friend, is pure Los Angeles building air. Wait until you get outside.”

“You mean it’s always smelled like this?” Rhett asked in dismay. “I was just used to it?”

“Yep.” The portal monitor handed Rhett off to another worker, who led him off towards his medical exit exam. Behind him, he heard Sasha come through the portal.

“Oh my god, what is that _smell_?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett went through the exit procedures, which were the opposite of the intake procedures: he turned his belongings in to be inspected for any hitchhiking seeds or bugs, he took a decontamination shower in the converted gym locker room, and he had a medical exam. The doctor prescribed some muscle relaxers and told Rhett to take it easy and follow up with his regular doctor if he didn’t feel better in a week.

He retrieved his electronics, dressed in a set of clothes that had been waiting for him, and was thrust back out into the real world. His friend Emannuel was waiting for him in the lobby.

“My man!” Emmanuel gave him a very gentle hug. “How was it?”

“Amazing,” Rhett replied. “I can’t even begin to tell you…” He shook his head.

“Well, let’s hit the pharmacy and get some takeout and you can tell me at least a little, okay?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Once Emannuel left, Rhett took a very long, very hot shower and crawled into bed. After two months in a bunk, his mattress felt both huge and luxuriously soft. Lulled by the night sounds of LA that were now both strange and familiar, he fell asleep and dreamed of a vast and endless ocean of grass.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next day, the first thing Rhett did was email Dr. Williams for Link’s number. Then he wrote his apology note to Marty. He hadn’t expected to be back on Earth for another two months, so he had no obligations. Rhett puttered around his apartment and cleaned things that didn’t need to be cleaned. He trimmed his beard and tried to catch up on some of the tv shows he’d missed, but he just couldn’t concentrate.

When he heard the chime that signalled an incoming email, Rhett leapt up like a shot. Dr. Williams had emailed him back! Rhett immediately put Link’s number into his phone.

He went to send a text and froze. What should he say? After a couple agonized minutes, he pressed send.

Rhett: hey its rhett

An answer arrived a couple more agonizing minutes later.

Link: hey!

Link: glad to be back?

Rhett: yes and no

Rhett: how’s your leg?

Link: i had surgery to get it drained

Link: feels better but still looks terrible

Link: you can come see if you want

Rhett raised his eyebrows.

Rhett: sure i got nothing going on

Link: god i know

Link: i cant even take a walk

They chatted about nothing for a little while longer before Link invited Rhett over to his apartment.

Link: its pretty boring here

Link: dont get too excited

Too late. Rhett was already excited.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett took an Uber over to Link’s place after lunch. The school had a number of small apartments meant for visiting scholars and other guests, and Link was staying in one until the Terra Nova oversight committee was done doing whatever it was they did. Meetings mostly, if Link was to be believed.

Link was up on the third floor, which seemed like a cruel thing to do to someone with a nonfunctional leg, but it was a modern building and had a very nice elevator. Rhett walked down the hallway, his steps silenced by thick navy carpet, and knocked on Link’s door.

There was a muffled yell of “Coming!” from inside, followed by a long silence. Rhett stood awkwardly in the hall--Link had mentioned he could walk a little now, but not how well. Finally, the door opened and Link gave him a crooked little grin. “Hey!”

“Hi.” Rhett had to stop his mouth from falling open. Link was clean shaven, and just clean in general, which wasn’t usually the case in Terra Nova. He was wearing a pale pink t-shirt and short gray running shorts. It was like a visual manifestation of the softer, gentler Link from the night of the storm. Rhett glanced down at his leg. It was still horribly bruised and there were a couple big squares of gauze taped to the outside of his thigh, but it was nowhere near as swollen. “Oh, that looks a _lot_ better!”

“Does it?” Link looked doubtfully at his thigh as he waved Rhett into the apartment. “It’s still really purple.”

“It’s not the size of a ham anymore, though.” Rhett looked around the little apartment. It was halfway between a studio and a one bedroom, with the bed in an alcove. There was a lot of cool gray with little pops of color from rugs, pillows, and artwork. “This is pretty nice.”

“It’s okay.” Link limped over to the bed and hauled himself back up. He had a pile of pillows to prop his leg up on and a bunch of stuff on the bedside table--a bottle of water, a box of granola bars, a couple books, his phone, and a bottle of pills. “I mean, I guess it’s the nicest place I’ve ever lived, but I don’t really want to be here.”

“Understandable.” Rhett grabbed one of the chairs from the little two person dining table and set it at the end of the bed. “So when you said they drained your leg…”

“Yeah, so you know how when you get a blister, the layers of skin separate and then there’s a bunch of fluid in between them?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, so when I hit the ground, I must have slid a little, because it tore a space between the skin and the muscle and it filled up with blood, like the blood blister from hell.” Link made a disgusted face. “Ugh, so gross.”

“So how did they drain it? With a syringe?”

“No… it had been too long since the injury for that.” Link looked a little sick. “It was all clotted up so the doctor had to make an incision and squeeze it out like… like…” He gagged. “Sorry.”

“Are you gonna throw up?” Rhett looked around for a wastebasket and spotted one through the open door to the bathroom.

Link shook his head and took a sip of water. “No, I just get really grossed out by medical stuff, especially if blood is involved.” He held up a hand as Rhett opened his mouth. “Dressing game is _not_ the same, so don’t even start with me.”

Rhett closed his mouth for a second before responding. “I guess it’s the opposite with me. Like, in the lab, I’ve done all sorts of stuff and none of it has ever grossed me out, but butchering that chicken was… kind of a lot.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Link said. “Anyway, I did throw up at the clinic when the doctor said, ‘Oh, it looks like blackberry jam!’ That motherfucker.” Rhett laughed. “He ended up having to do another incision lower down because there was so much of it. It’s still draining, too. They left these rubber tubes and I have to change the gauze…” He gagged again.

Rhett snorted. “It’s a good thing you don’t have a period.”

“Seriously.” Link shuddered. “I don’t know how people deal with that.”

“Probably because they don’t have a choice.” Rhett changed the subject. “So what have you been up to?”

“Nothing, really. Reading some books, watching some TV. It sucks. I’m not really an indoors kind of person,” Link said. “They want me to come into the office on Monday.”

“Today’s Wednesday, right?” Rhett wasn’t sure.

“It’s Friday.”

“Jesus.” Rhett shook his head. “So what do you do there, anyway?”

“Um, planning, mostly.” Link took another sip of water. “Most of the people on the committee have never even been there, especially not for a long time, so supposedly my input is very valuable.”

Rhett shifted in his chair. It was pretty uncomfortable with his back as stiff as it was. “‘Supposedly’?”

“They think they know better than me. Of course, they’re wrong.” Link rolled his eyes and noticed Rhett’s discomfort. “Are you okay?”

“My back’s still pretty sore.”

“You can come sit here with me. Plenty of room.” Link whacked the mattress next to him.

“Uh, sure.” Rhett climbed onto the bed. Link gave him a pillow from behind his own back and one of the throw pillows from under his leg. Rhett squished them into a suitable lumbar support and leaned back with a relieved sigh. “Ah, that’s so much better.”

“I’m sorry you got hurt rescuing my useless ass,” Link said. His expression was wry, but Rhett could tell there was real guilt behind it.

“It’s okay, just some pulled muscles,” Rhett said. “I’m sorry that--”

Link cut him off. “You don’t have anything to apologize for, Rhett.”

“No, I was going to say that I’m sorry you had to come back like this.”

“Oh.” Link sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “It’s so hard. I hate LA. It’s too big and too busy and I don’t have any friends here. I just want to go home, but I can’t even fly back for the weekend because the doctor said I’m at risk for blood clots. I don’t know how long it’s going to take for my leg to heal and I don’t know if I’m going to get full function back. And then Terra Nova… that’s even more up in the air.”

Rhett furrowed his brow, concerned. “What does that mean?”

“I… don’t worry about that now. I don’t want to start any rumors.” Link sighed again. He turned and looked at Rhett. His eyes were very, very bright. “I just need something good right now, Rhett.”

“Like what?”

In response, Link grabbed a double handful of Rhett’s shirt and pulled him in for a kiss.


	16. Chapter 16

It was a soft, gentle kiss, suitable for the soft, gentle side of Link. It was a question. It was a request. Rhett answered by grabbing Link’s waist and pulling him closer, until Link made an uncomfortable little noise, so Rhett scooted closer himself. They sat there, hands on each other but otherwise unmoving, kissing deeper and deeper until Rhett had to pull back and catch his breath.

“What is this?” he asked, heart racing. He felt flushed and a little lightheaded.

“Something I want,” Link answered quietly. His right hand was over Rhett’s heart. “But we don’t have to.”

Link was so pretty, with his pink cheeks and wide, bright eyes. His waist was warm and trim under Rhett’s hands. Rhett licked his lips. “Is this gonna make it weird?”

“There’s not much of an ‘it’ to make weird,” Link pointed out.

“Yeah,” Rhett said. Link’s palms were a light, warm pressure on his chest. Surely Link could feel his heartbeat. _I need something good right now_. Well, Rhett could use something good, too. “I want it, too.”

Link gave him a brilliant, crooked smile. “Good.” He pulled Rhett into a new kiss, one that wasn’t soft or gentle or questioning, and Rhett gave back as good as he got. For the first time since the storm, Link’s confident, capable side came out. He knew what he wanted, and he knew how to get it. 

Soon, they both had their shirts off. Rhett had seen Link shirtless many times, but it was different now. Before, it had been quick, sidelong glimpses here or there in the shower room or when Link was working outside on a warm day, and Rhett hadn’t really imagined doing anything with Link beyond a quick hookup, if anything at all. This was an explicit, intimate invitation.

Rhett was perfectly aware that Link didn’t have a perfect body, but at that moment, the only flaws he saw were the bruised leg and a truly unfortunate farmer’s tan. 

“I thought you were hot when I first saw you,” he murmured as he ran his hands across Link’s chest. “But you look even better close up.”

“What a coincidence,” Link said with a little smile. “I could say the same thing.”

Rhett glanced down at himself. Hot? Enough people had said he was good looking that he sort of believed it, but _hot_? “I don’t--”

Link cut him off. He had one hand down the back of Rhett’s joggers. “I’ll make that decision, thank you. And if you don’t believe me…” He squeezed Rhett’s ass with one hand and grabbed one of Rhett’s hands with the other, placing it on his crotch.

“Ohh…” Rhett could feel that Link was rock hard through the thin nylon of his running shorts. He was rock hard, too. Rhett slowly rubbed his palm across the fabric, from Link’s tip to his balls and back up again. Link made a tiny hungry noise. Rhett looked up to see him with his eyes closed and face tilted up to the ceiling. “Are you wearing anything under these?”

“No.” Link’s voice was a little strangled.

“Mm.” Rhett slid his hand down to Link’s thigh and then up under his shorts. His eyebrows shot up. “You shaved your balls?”

“I love how it feels,” Link said a little breathlessly. “I love having them played with…” He shivered as Rhett rubbed his thumb across them.

“Can you take these off?” Rhett tugged on the shorts. Usually this was about the time he’d yank them off himself, but the last thing he wanted to do was hurt Link.

“Yeah.” Link carefully peeled his shorts off and then shoved his prop pillows onto the floor. “Just be careful, okay?” he asked as he set his injured leg gingerly down on the bed.

“Okay.” Rhett looked down at Link, stretched out naked before him. There was a world of difference between Link nude in the shower room and _this_. The contrast between the dark hair on Link’s belly that ran down to his neatly trimmed public hair and his smooth, hairless sack was delicious, and he was longer than Rhett might have thought. “God _damn_.”

It was Rhett’s turn for awkward positioning. He got rid of his own pants and ended up roughly perpendicular to Link on his belly, one hand around Link’s dick and Link’s balls cupped in the other. He buried his face in them, licking and kissing and caressing back and forth. Link smelled clean and masculine and sexy in a way that made Rhett think, _This must be pheromones._

Link was the quietest person Rhett had ever slept with. He gasped and sighed but it wasn’t until he came with one hand tangled in Rhett’s hair, the other gripping the back on his neck, and his dick as deep in Rhett’s mouth as Rhett could get it, that Link made any noise at all. “Jesus, Rhett,” he gasped after a low groan. “That was… wow.”

Rhett rolled over onto his back with a groan of his own, although in his case it was pain rather than pleasure. “So was that what you wanted?”

“Um, not really.”

“Uhh…”

“I wanted--” Link leaned forward but he couldn’t reach Rhett’s dick. “Get over here, damn it.”

Figuring out a position that they could both stand took a while, but having a hand on the back of Link’s head as he took Rhett _all_ the way down made it all worth it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A while later, when they were both cleaned up and fully dressed and Link had his leg propped back up where it belonged, the two men sat snuggled on the bed and talked. They didn’t really know much about each other, and it seemed like a good time for that to change.

“Are you always that quiet?” Rhett asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“It was kind of weird, man. I was like… is he enjoying this or not?” Rhett held up his hands in a shrug. “I’m pretty sure you did, though.

Link laughed. “Yeah, I did. Um, I didn’t have any privacy when I was growing up, and then later being quiet was good for not getting caught so that’s just how I am now, I guess.” He shrugged.

“Did you have to share a bedroom or something?”

“I didn’t even _have_ a bedroom.” Link grimaced at Rhett’s dismayed expression. “Yeah, our trailer was maybe a little bigger than this apartment and it only had one bedroom, so I slept on the couch unless my cousins were over, and then I slept on the floor.”

“That’s…”

“That’s rural poverty for you.” Link sighed. “When I got my first real paycheck, I started saving up to buy my parents a house. I did it, too.”

“That’s awesome,” Rhett said, meaning it. “So how’d you get from there to Terra Nova? I know Marty heard about it through Facebook.”

“Well.” Link took a deep breath.“I graduated from high school, _barely_ , joined the Army, got kicked out after a year and a half, went back home, worked on the tobacco farm with my dad for a while, hated my life, and then one day one of my buddies emailed me to say that his uncle was looking to hire people for the North Outpost construction project and that was that.”

“You were a soldier?” Rhett asked, incredulous.

“Not a very good one. You know how in movies there’s always the one recruit who just can’t get their act together and fucks up all the time?” Rhett nodded. “Yeah, that was me. I got a ‘failure to adapt’ discharge. They probably shouldn’t have let me in in the first place, because I _really_ didn’t want to be there.”

“Then why did you enlist?”

“Honestly? I wanted to get my teeth fixed.” Link laughed at Rhett’s expression. “I’m serious! My parents only ever went to the dentist if they had to get a tooth pulled. My mom had dentures before she was forty. I still had all my own teeth but I knew I wouldn’t if I didn’t do something. And then there was the whole, you know, steady paycheck, GI bill, opportunity to get out of North Carolina… it seemed like a really good idea at the time.”

“So did you get your teeth fixed?” Rhett asked. It seemed like the obvious question at this point.

“Yep.” Link bared his teeth and chomped the air a few times. “ _That_ was actually a good idea.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty nice teeth.” Rhett thought about how competent and independent Link was on the prairie, where he had near complete autonomy. He also had a bit of a _fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me_ attitude, so it wasn’t a shock that Link had struggled in such a strict environment. “Bummer about the GI bill, though.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Link said. “I’ve spent most of the past six years hanging out with college people. I might not have a degree, but I’ve learned a _lot_.”

“Yeah, I guess you would.” Rhett disentangled himself from Link and scooted down to lay flat on the bed. Link idly ran his hand through Rhett’s hair.

“So…” Link began. “Is this something that you might want to do again?”

“Um.” Rhett tried to figure out how to answer that. Yes, he would like to have sex with Link again, but no, he didn’t _just_ want to have sex with Link. And there, he realized, was his answer. “I don’t want to be fuck buddies, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Link huffed a laugh out of his nose. “No, I didn’t mean it like that! I meant like hanging out and talking.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“But we can totally hook up if you want.”

Rhett considered that. Hanging out, talking, hooking up… “Are you asking me to be in a relationship?”

“Umm… I guess so?” Rhett twisted his head around to look up at Link. His face was bright pink. “Sorry. I’m really bad at this stuff.”

How was this the same man who walked around Nova Nebraska in a worn Carhartt coat and battered cowboy boots like he could handle anything it threw at him? Rhett sat up and put his arms around Link. “You’re fine,” he said and kissed Link on the cheek. “And yeah, I’d like to do this again.”

“Good.” Link gave him a wide smile and a kiss to seal the deal.


	17. Chapter 17

On Monday, Rhett was at loose ends. He’d spent most of the weekend with Link, but now Link was back at the Terra Nova Earth headquarters, at least part time. Rhett didn’t have anything academic going on, as he hadn’t expected to be back for another two months, and he knew he wasn’t needed at the lab, either.

He went anyway.

Everyone was excited to see him, even Jenny, whose place he’d taken on the Terra Nova team. They all had a million questions and he was happy to hang around and chat until Dr. Williams showed up an hour later and shooed everyone back to their stations.

“What are you doing here?” he asked Rhett. “You don’t have to be here until next semester.”

 _Neither do you_ , Rhett thought. Out loud, he said, “I dunno, just felt like getting back into the swing of things.”

“Well, they picked up another research assistant while they were gone, so there’s no room for you,” Dr. Williams said. For some reason, the only lab on Earth that worked with actual Novan life forms was still stuck on the sixth floor of an outdated, cramped building. If J-Dubs said there was no room, there was really _no room_.

“Oh.” Rhett frowned. Two months with no classes _and_ no work? Either he could go hard on finishing his thesis or he could pick up a new hobby. “I guess I’ll go back home and take a nap.”

He did, and woke up three hours later, groggy, disoriented, and satisfied.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett’s new hobby turned out to be Link.

Link didn’t have any kind of predictable schedule (he just had to be available to attend meetings whenever they happened to be, which he absolutely _hated_ ) and Rhett had no schedule whatsoever, so they spent a lot of time together.

At first, it was just hanging around Link’s little apartment. Rhett was happy enough to take over bandage changing duties, as well as the more traditional duties of a well partner caring for their injured counterpart: running little errands, doing the heavier chores, buying special treats.

“I can’t wait to get this last drain out,” Link said. They were lounging on the couch in his apartment. He had a follow up appointment with the surgeon the next day. “I can finally take a _real_ shower without having to wrap my leg in plastic like a leftover.”

“Leftover ham leg,” Rhett said with a grin. He had Link’s right foot in his lap so he could massage it, since it tended to get swollen.

“Leftover ham leg,” Link agreed. “Leftover ham leg gone bad,” he added. His thigh was still somewhat swollen and lumpy, and the bruise was currently brilliantly mottled with green and yellow. It still looked awful, but Link said it wasn’t nearly as painful.

“But you still won’t really be able to use it. Not like you want to, at least.”

“Nope, not until everything readheres.” This was a sore point for someone as active as Link. He’d have to wear a pressure garment and avoid activities that could reinjure it, which was “basically everything fun”.

“There’s gotta be _something_ you can do with one leg,” Rhett said. “I mean, the Paralympics are full of people with nonstandard legs.”

“Hmm. Can you hand me my phone?” Link asked. Rhett leaned over and grabbed it off the table. A few minutes of searching later, Link said, “Modified recumbent bike.”

“Modified recumbent bike?”

Link nodded. “Modified recumbent bike.”

“How much is that going to run you?”

“I dunno, like two thousand, maybe?” Link shrugged.

“ _Two thousand_?” Rhett’s bike was a fifty dollar Craigslist Special that had to be at least forty years old. 

“It’s not that much,” Link said. “I mean, my expenses are pretty low. The only big ones are my parents’ mortgage and my cousin’s tuition.”

Rhett frowned. His stipend, combined with what he made at the lab, just barely covered his expenses. Two thousand dollars for a bicycle, even a fancy custom one, seemed absurd. “We can go look at some after your appointment tomorrow, I guess.”

Link grinned at him. “Awesome.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*

The guy at the bike store was very excited both about customizing a bike for Link and that they’d spent time in Terra Nova. 

“I heard that Bigfoot is there, man. Is it true?” he asked as he measured Link’s leg.

“Uh…” The two men glanced at each other. “Well, I’ve never seen one,” Link said finally.

“I wouldn’t completely count it out, though,” Rhett said. “There’s no reason there wouldn’t be some kind of bipedal hominid there somewhere.”

“Right on!” The bike guy nodded happily. “I always knew he was real.” 

Later, Rhett was very proud of himself for not laughing at that, or at the expression Link had on his face.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Other cryptids the bike store guy thought might be found in Terra Nova: lake monsters, chupacabras, and krakens.

Rhett’s opinion on Terra Novan cryptids: cryptids are animals unknown to science so therefore by that definition, almost _all_ animals on Terra Nova are cryptids.

Link’s opinion on this conversation: please just shut up so we can get out of here.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Other than the hassle of getting it to and from the park, the recumbent bike was a huge success.

“You’re going to have one really buff leg and one skinny leg,” Rhett said as he helped Link out of the bike after their ride.

“Might as well,” Link said. “They’re never going to match anyway.” He scowled down at his thigh, where the pressure garment could be seen sticking out from under his shorts, but Rhett knew what was underneath: two healing incisions, as long as his palm, puckering the skin around them. The doctor said that Link shouldn’t expect it to heal perfectly and that he would probably always have dips and lumps. Rhett didn’t think Link was vain, but hearing that had obviously bothered him.

“Do you feel better, now that you have something you can do instead of sit inside all day?” Rhett asked when they were back at his apartment, which was small, a little run down, and absolutely filled with books.

“Much,” Link said from the couch, where he was flipping through one of Rhett’s books, a textbook entitled _A Comparative Anatomy of The Mouse and The Rat_. “Hey, you wanna hear something funny?”

“Uh…” The last time Link said something like that, Rhett got a story about how he had to quit smoking after getting incredibly sick with nicotine poisoning while working on the tobacco farm, and realized that Link’s normal meter was not quite calibrated the same as his. “Sure.”

“I didn’t believe in evolution until my second year on Terra Nova,” Link said. “Mostly because I didn’t know what it was.”

“ _What_?”

“It’s true! Um, I went to public school, but everyone in my town was really religious, so it was mentioned but never really explained?” Link shrugged. “It wasn’t a very good school. I mean, I could read and write and do some algebra, but once I enlisted, I was like… _shit,_ I don’t know _anything_! Like, the other guys were the same age as I was for the most part, but they all knew so much more.”

Rhett, who had always been one of the best students at very good schools and who suddenly felt very privileged for taking it for granted, asked, “So what changed?”

“The first year North Outpost was open, J-Dubs came with his students and he overheard me asking them some really stupid questions, so he started giving me little science lessons and it was like… _pow_!” Link mimed his head exploding. “It just made so much sense!”

“Yeah, it’s pretty awesome.” Rhett sat down next to him. “It’s weird to think of you not knowing stuff.”

“What?” Link laughed. “What does _that_ mean?”

“Just, in Terra Nova…” Rhett began. “You do everything! You hunt and fix things and help with everyones’ projects and take care of the horses and all that. It’s kind of intimidating.”

“Really? ‘Cause that’s kind of how I feel about you, here in LA,” Link said. “You know how to get places on the Metro, you know where to eat, and how to avoid weirdos. I’m just… lost.”

“Huh.” Rhett considered that. It was true that Link didn’t really go anywhere by himself, but Rhett had assumed that was because it was hard to get around with his leg. “How much time have you actually spent in LA? Like, you’ve never lived here, right?”

Link shook his head. “I usually just fly out a few days before going to Terra Nova and then leave after a couple days. This last time, though, I had a funeral the day before and my flight was late and I just barely got here in time.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Rhett said. “Who passed?”

“My uncle, and don’t be sorry,” Link said. “I only went to make sure that son of a bitch was really dead.”

“Uh…”

Link sighed. “Ok, remember how I said I’d sleep on the couch unless my cousins were over?”

“Yeah.”

“So their dad, my uncle, is-- _was_ \--my dad’s younger brother, and he was a hardcore alcoholic, and so was his wife. They had three kids younger than me, and they’d dump my cousins off at my house whenever, or my parents would have to go get them. Like, sometimes it would be in the middle of the night, sometimes they’d only be over for a few hours, sometimes they’d be over for weeks. Eventually, it was pretty much all the time. That’s part of the reason I’d go hunting by myself, so we’d all have enough to eat,” Link said. “Also it was nice to get some privacy.”

“Jesus.” Rhett shook his head. “Don’t foster parents get some kind of payment, though?”

Link snorted. “None of this was official, Rhett. That would mean admitting there was a problem.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Anyway, his liver finally gave out, thank god.” Link grimaced. “I know that sounds awful, but it’s just such a relief knowing he’s not around to torment us anymore.”

“What about his wife?”

“Dunno, she ran off ages ago.”

“And your cousins?”

“They’re okay, I guess. The older two are married with kids and the youngest one, Maggie, lives with my parents. She’s in school to be a hairdresser.” Link smiled. “I’m really proud of her.”

“You really love your family, don’t you?” Rhett asked.

“Well, _yeah_ ,” Link said. “I’m gonna go visit in a couple weeks, I think.”

“How long are you going to stay in LA?” Rhett asked. The thought had been lurking in the back of his mind for a while. He’d probably be moving next summer after he graduated, to wherever he could find a job. And Link… well, Link would be in Terra Nova.

“At least until the expedition was supposed to be over, so another month and a half? But maybe longer.” Link slumped down on the couch unhappily. “You can’t tell anyone what I’m going to tell you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“They’re talking about maybe shutting North Outpost down instead of fixing it.

Rhett’s jaw dropped. “ _What_?”

Link sighed. “Yeah, there’s the environmental impact of having foreign materials spread out all over the prairie, and then there’s how much it’s going to cost to fix it versus how much it would be to just tear it down. It’s all they’ve talked about for the past week.”

“Wow.” Rhett thought about an article he’d read years ago, about how important it was that UCLA have an additional research space on Terra Nova. “That sucks.”

“Yeah.” Link put down the textbook and stood up. “Man, I don’t want to talk about this. I think about it too much, anyway. Let’s go do something.”

Rhett stood up, too. “There’s that shaved ice place a couple blocks away. Can you walk that far?”

“Yeah, especially if we take a break to eat before coming back.” They headed out the door.

“I’ll let you lead the way this time,” Rhett teased. He’d been trying to help Link get more comfortable in the city, with mixed results.

“It’s two blocks,” Link said as they walked out of the building and immediately started off in the wrong direction. “I think I can manage.” Rhett grabbed his shoulders and gently turned him around. For a moment, Link continued walking like nothing had happened, but then he started giggling, and they stood there on the sidewalk laughing, and Rhett had never liked anyone nearly as much.


	18. Chapter 18

“I have personally seen you eat almost every creature from Nova Nebraska, and _salmon_ is where you’re gonna draw the line?”

“It’s raw!” Link said with an alarmed look at the sushi rolls gliding past them on the conveyor belt. “And what the hell is that?” He pointed at one roll with a single chopstick held like a poker.

“It’s eel.” Rhett snagged the plate and put it in front of Link. “And it’s cooked.”

“Ugh.” After several clumsy attempts, Link managed to get the roll into his mouth. Rhett watched his expression intently as he chewed.

“Good?” he asked eagerly.

Link held up a finger as he finished chewing. “I don’t really want another one, but I didn’t hate it.”

Rhett grinned. That was a win in his book.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“See, this is where I get messed up,” Link complained. “This--” Here he held up his phone, a map of LA pulled up on it. “And this--” He gestured to the Metro map on the wall of the station. “--are not the same!”

“They don’t have to be the same,” Rhett said wearily. Link just couldn’t wrap his head around the transit map for some reason. “Look… you know the phrase ‘as the crow flies’?”

Link rolled his eyes. “Uh, yeah.”

“Okay, so the transit map is like as the crow flies, from station to station, underground. So, look, we’re here--” Rhett pointed to a spot on Link’s phone map. “And we want to be _here_.” He pointed to their destination. “Right?”

“Right,” Link agreed with a skeptical expression.

“So there’s a bunch of buildings and a park in between, so if we drove, we’d have to take a lot of turns.”

“Okay.”

“But we’re underground. There’s no buildings or parks here, so even if the track isn’t really straight, it functions as if it were, because we’re going directly from point A to point B.” Rhett looked at Link to see if he understood. “Yeah?”

“I mean, it makes sense when you put it like that.” Link put his phone back in his pocket. “I think I’m just too used to driving on the highway. This is completely different.”

“Yeah, it really is,” Rhett said. “Now, which way do we go?”

“Um…” Link studied the Metro map for a moment, then pointed to their left. “That way, but I think we’re on the wrong side.”

“Yeah!” Rhett held up a hand for a high five. “You got it!” Link hit it with a satisfying _smack_ and beamed at him, and Rhett knew that he’d never want anyone else.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Are you trying to make me like LA?” Link asked.

“Maybe!” said Rhett, who totally was. “Is it working?” 

They’d spent the previous day at the beach, as Link had never been before, and today they’d ended up getting an extremely in depth, behind the scenes tour of the La Brea Tar Pits after Link mentioned to one of the staff that their sabre tooth cat depiction wasn’t that accurate, and he would know. Every single one of the scientists there was green with envy that both Link and Rhett had seen most of their favorite creatures in the flesh (and subsequently eaten them). The dire wolf guy was especially gobsmacked by Link’s story of shooting one from horseback. 

“More than I used to, I guess,” Link said. He was in Rhett’s kitchen putting together a slow cooker squirrel recipe his mom used to make, only he had to use rabbit because none of the nearby specialty butchers carried squirrel, and he had to make it in Rhett’s instant pot because Rhett didn’t have a slow cooker. “I never really had reason to, before. It was just another layover between home and Nova Nebraska.”

“So it _is_ growing on you.” Rhett leaned back on the couch and crossed his arms in satisfaction.

“Yeah, fine, whatever.” There was a soft _crack_ as Link cut through a rabbit joint with Rhett’s crappy butcher knife. Rhett wondered if Link was capable of making a vegetarian meal. If he was, Rhett certainly hadn’t seen any evidence. “I admit it’s been a nice enough place to visit these past few weeks, although I think that’s mostly because you’re here.” Another _crack_. “I don’t know if I’d want to live here, though.”

“That’s how I felt at first,” Rhett admitted. “It’s so different from North Carolina, but I love it now.”

“Speak of North Carolina…” Link took the knife to the sink and washed it off. “I’m planning on going out next Thursday and coming back Monday. Do you want to come?”

“Oh!” Rhett said. “Um, I wasn’t going to go back until Christmas.” He couldn’t afford to go home and back twice in three months. If he went now, he’d have to skip Christmas.

“That’s not really what I asked,” Link said as he began layering carrots and potatoes in the bottom of the pot. “Um, how about this: if I buy your ticket, do you want to come?”

Link wasn’t rich, but his relative lack of expenses and underprivileged upbringing made him able to save more money than he really knew what to do with. Rhett knew Link could easily afford an extra set of tickets. He also knew that Link knew that he had nothing going on, and therefore no real reason to decline.

“Sure,” Rhett said. He really would love to go home, even for a couple days. “So is this, like, together? Or are we just carpooling?” Rhett thought about that for a second. “Airplane pooling.”

“I don’t know.” Link had finished layering in his meat and vegetables. He opened a can of chicken broth and poured it in. “Are we at the family meeting stage yet?” They’d only been together for three weeks.

Rhett pondered that. It would be the quickest he’d ever introduced a new partner to his family, or at least someone they didn’t already know as one of his classmates. “I don’t think I’d take someone who wasn’t a boyfriend to meet them.” He hadn’t discussed labels with Link yet.

“Well, if you had a boyfriend, would you take him?” Link picked up the lid to the instant pot and tried to seal it. “Crap.” 

Rhett came over and helped him. “Yeah, I’d take a boyfriend.” He set the timer on the instant pot.

“Then how about we spend a couple days with my family, and then a couple with yours?” Link asked, putting his arms around Rhett’s neck. “Because I don’t think I’d take someone who wasn’t a boyfriend, either.”

A wave of warm happiness sloshed over Rhett. He grinned happily at Link and gave him a big kiss. “Okay.” He glanced at the timer. “Hey, do you think we can get each other off before the timer goes off?”

Link raised his eyebrows and waggled them salaciously. “Let’s go find out, huh?”


	19. Chapter 19

Rhett had secretly been dreading travelling with Link after the Metro map debacle, but apparently airports were easier to navigate than subways, especially LAX. Link had been through it many, many times.

Every time they did something new together, Rhett learned a little more about Link. Link only ever ordered V8 as his airplane drink, Link fell asleep on airplanes with his mouth open, Link did not appreciate having his picture taken while he was asleep on an airplane with his mouth open. Link was probably learning just as much about him, but Rhett didn’t ask what.

When they arrived at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, Link took charge of renting a car and driving. This was his home turf, and he was confident and relaxed in a way that Rhett had never seen in Terra Nova or LA. He rolled down the window and sang along to the “90s to Today!” country radio station, and Rhett did his best to join in, making up words when he didn’t know the real ones.

Link’s parents’ house was in a modest little neighborhood. It was a low ranch, painted cream, with a lush garden turning autumn brown and a wreath on the front door with a _Welcome!_ banner across it. Link pulled into the driveway and parked behind a battered red pickup.

“C’mon!” Link excitedly motioned Rhett to follow him as he went up to the front door and unlocked it. “Mama! Dad! Maggie! I’m home!”

Chaos erupted. A scruffy little terrier was the first to arrive. It wiggled and danced around Link’s feet. A middle aged woman and a teenage girl appeared next and pulled Link into hugs and kissed his cheeks. Finally, a middle aged man came from what must have been the garage and clapped Link on the shoulder. Rhett stood off to the side. No one paid him any attention except the little dog, who sniffed his shoes with interest.

Finally, the older woman noticed him. “Oh, you must be Rhett!” she said, and gave him a hug, too. “Link’s told us so much about you.”

“Has he?” Rhett said weakly with a glance at Link, who winked at him. He pulled himself together. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Neal.”

“Please, honey, call me Sherri.” Sherri introduced her husband, Carl, and Link’s cousin, Maggie. “Now, come on into the kitchen. I made some sweet tea and lemonade for y’all, and I want to hear all about it.”

“About _what_ , Mama?” Link said, laughing.

“Everything!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When Link said he bought his parents a house, Rhett had pictured something… not luxurious, exactly, but something a bit fancier than the little ranch. It was tired and worn and apparently hadn’t been redecorated since the 70s (it had orange shag carpet and knotty pine paneling in the living room, for goodness sakes!), but everything was scrupulously clean and cheerful. There were framed family pictures everywhere, including one of a very young looking Link in uniform, and little kids’ drawings on the fridge.

Link’s parents were a perfect fit for the house. They were both a little tired and worn, which made them look older than they really were, but they were also quite possibly the nicest people Rhett had ever met. Link’s cousin Maggie seemed nice, too, but she barely spoke. Link had mentioned that she was very shy, so Rhett just let her be.

Sherri made the slow cooker squirrel (“The real deal,” as Link said) for dinner. “Got the squirrels from the Johnson kid across the street,” Carl said. “He owed me one for fixing his lawnmower last month.” Rhett had to admit that Sherri’s version was better than Link’s, but he didn’t know if that was due to the squirrel or if Sherri was just a better cook.

After dinner, Rhett stayed at the table while everyone else went into the living room to gossip about a bunch of people Rhett didn’t know. Instead, he got his laptop out to check his email. The supply wagon must have come through, because he had a couple emails from Marty. One was in response to his note about the rifle, and the other was full of pictures of Jupiter and the other horses, including Biscuit, and of North Outpost in various stages of clean up.

 _The entire roof of the house has to be completely replaced_ , Marty wrote. _It’s covered up with tarps for now, but we haven’t heard anything about actually getting it fixed. Privately, I’m wondering if the environmental committee is going to use this as an excuse to dismantle the outpost. They were apparently very opposed to it in the first place, and I hear that there’s a constant fight about keeping the outposts open, even when they aren’t damaged._

That all tracked with what Link had told him. Rhett forwarded the email to him, because he’d probably find it interesting, and there were some nice pictures of his horse in it. He didn’t get a chance to write back, though, because he got called into the living room to play cards.

Rhett didn’t mention the email when they finally went to bed. Link’s room had a few pictures of Terra Nova hung up on the wall and a bunch of outdoors gear spilling out of the closet. To Rhett’s great relief, he had a queen size bed.

“They don’t mind us sharing a bed?” he asked. Link’s parents were pretty religious.

Link laughed. Rhett thought he looked particularly adorable in his tight t-shirt and boxers. The ever present taupe compression garment covered his thigh. “That particular horse left the barn a _looong_ time ago. Also, I’m an adult.”

That, in Rhett’s opinion, was a bit of a dubious statement coming from someone wearing a graphic tee with a stupid pun on it. “Fair enough,” he said.

They climbed into bed and got into the same position as they were in after the storm: Link on his left side with Rhett tucked behind him. It was the only position they ever slept in, because why mess with success? It just felt right.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

The next morning, after Sherri made the most amazing biscuits and gravy Rhett had ever tasted, Link took him out in the rusted pickup on a little tour of places from his past: the tobacco fields where he worked with his dad, the trailer park they used to live in, the K-12 school, and last but not least, his secret spot by the river.

“This is beautiful,” Rhett said. The banks were lined with trees, a few autumn leaves still holding on, and the water rippled over the rocks in a most soothing way.

“Yeah,” Link said. He waded in ankle deep and stood watching the eddies around his rubber hunting boots. “This is where I’d come to be by myself when things got to be too much, which was pretty often.”

“With your cousins?” Rhett asked. Between things Link had mentioned in passing and things Sherri and Carl said last night, he got the feeling that the instability of the situation had been horrible for Link, and his mom telling him to be strong for his cousins and to be thankful he had it better than them hadn’t helped.

“That, and just everything else. School…” Link shrugged. “Being the poor kid with bad clothes was hard enough without being different.”

“Different?”

“You know…” Link gestured vaguely to himself. Along with his camo boots, he had on a worn red flannel and looked more like his Terra Nova self than he had since leaving Terra Nova.

“Yeah, I know.” Rhett did know, too. He couldn’t articulate exactly what it was, but the same thing that made Link a target growing up was the same thing that drew him in. Vulnerability, maybe, or an unwavering sense of self.

“I never felt like I belonged anywhere until I went to Terra Nova. As soon as I stepped through that portal, I knew.. Well, once I quit puking, anyway.” Link laughed, and then grew serious. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t go back.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Rhett asked. “Even if they close North Outpost, there’s still East Outpost and headquarters.”

“I dunno, it’s still all so up in the air.” Link walked back onto the shore. “C’mon, let’s go back. Maggie’s gonna cut my hair.”


	20. Chapter 20

Link sat in a white resin deck chair with a towel around his shoulders as Maggie cut his hair. He told her stories from their time in Terra Nova with Rhett, who was sitting a little ways off in another chair, chiming in occasionally. Maggie seemed a little more comfortable, and while she didn’t directly speak to Rhett, she did laugh at his jokes and make eye contact.

“All done,” she said as she swept hair off the back of Link’s neck and pulled the towel off with a flourish.

“Thanks, Mags,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “Feels good.”

“Looks good,” Rhett said. It did, too, short on the sides and longer on top in a way that suited Link well.

“Do you want one?” Maggie asked as Link went inside to check his new haircut out. Rhett’s eyebrow shot up.

“Uh, sure.” He sat in the chair in front of her and she clipped the towel around his neck with a clothespin. “I like the length, so just neaten it up a little?”

“Okay.” Maggie took a comb and ran it through his hair. “Is Link your boyfriend? Look down.” She gently directed him to look down at the patio.

“Yeah. Is that okay?”

“Mmhmm.” Rhett couldn’t see her, but he _could_ see her shadow nodding in assent. “It’s good, ‘cause he’s been talking about you a lot when he calls.” She put down the comb and picked up her scissors.

“Really? What does he say?”

 _Snip snip_. “Um…” _Snip._ “That he’s really glad you’re around to help him with his leg ‘cause he’s having a really hard time with it…” _Snip snip snip_. “And you don’t make him feel dumb for being lost in the city.” _Snip snip_. “And you didn’t treat him like the help at the outpost.” _Snip_.

Rhett snorted. “Are you kidding? He was obviously in charge.” Maggie giggled.

The screen door banged as Link stuck his head out. “Are y’all okay with Golden Corral for lunch?” Rhett and Maggie answered in the affirmative, so Link vanished back inside with another bang to relay their answers.

 _Snip_. “He’s never brought anyone home before.” _Snip snip snip_.

“Really?”

“Nope.” _Snip snip._ “I think he wants to see what we think.” _Snip snip._

Rhett furrowed his brow. “Uh…”

Maggie pulled her scissors away and laughed quietly. “Don’t worry, you passed.” 

Rhett let go of some tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Okay, good.”

“Mmhmm.” _Snip snip snip_.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Maggie said that you like me,” Rhett said that evening as they tucked themselves into bed.

“Oh, she did, did she?” Link sighed in faux exasperation. “That was supposed to be a secret.” He was silent for a moment, and then they both broke out in giggles.

“I like your family,” Rhett said. “Probably because they all actually get along.”

“Yeah, _now_ they do, but when my dad still worked in the fields, that was a different story. He’s on disability now.”

“What happened?” Rhett asked. “He’s so young.” It turned out that Link’s parents were the rare teenage shotgun wedding couple who actually worked out long term.

“Oh, just a lifetime of hard work, but he blew his knee out and there aren’t a lot of desk jobs for guys who dropped out of school at sixteen, so…” Link shrugged. “Between disability, what my mom earns at the hardware store, and whatever Maggie gets from babysitting or whatever, they do alright.”

“My parents are…” Rhett thought about how to phrase it. “My mom is super sweet, but my dad is kind of a hardass and he has these really specific, arbitrary values. He’s gonna ask where you went to college and shit like that.”

“Oh, _that_ ,” Link said dismissively. “Yeah, a lot of the college people are like that, too. Don’t worry, that doesn’t bother me anymore.”

“Okay, good.” Rhett had been secretly freaking out about his dad meeting Link. He was pretty sure Link could take whatever bullshit his dad came up with, but he wasn’t quite sure how his dad would react to Link. It wasn’t that his dad was prejudiced against blue collar workers, exactly, but he was a big believer in the just world fallacy. “Just try not to take him too seriously.”

Link laughed and snuggled closer. “I think you’re the one taking him too seriously.”

Rhett laughed too and gave Link a hug. “Hush. Let’s go to sleep now.”

But there was a little part of his brain that knew Link was right.

~*~*~*~*~**~*

After loading up the rental car and saying their goodbyes, the two men set off. Rhett’s parents lived a few hours away, so Link proposed that they stop for lunch on the way and maybe do a little sightseeing.

“There’s a carnivorous plant garden,” Rhett suggested as he scrolled through attractions on his phone. “That sounds cool.”

“Is there a Bojangles nearby?” Link wanted to know. It was vitally important to him that they eat at Bojangles at least once during the trip.

“Uh…” Rhett zoomed out on the map. “Yeah.”

“Sold!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Oh, honey, we’re so glad to see you!” Rhett’s mom exclaimed as she gave him a hug and pulled him down to kiss his cheek. “Oh, and you must be Link!” She hugged him, too, but skipped the kiss. “I’m Debra.”

Link smiled almost bashfully at her. “That’s me. Nice to meet you.” He pivoted to Rhett’s dad and held out his hand. “Link.”

Rhett’s dad took it and gave it a hearty shake. “Dave.” Rhett was impressed. That was exactly the sort of thing his dad ate up, and his dad did indeed look pleased.

That only lasted as long as it took him to look Link up and down, from his snapback to his rubber hunting boots. _Shit_ , Rhett thought. Those damn boots! They were just so… rural.

“You a hunter, son?” Dave asked, which was a stupid question because he knew that the reason they’d been out of North Outpost during the storm was because they were hunting together.

“Not on Earth, no,” Link said. There was the slightest bit of a standoff before Debra interrupted.

“Come on in and sit down. Y’all must be tired! Let me get you some sweet tea…”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Why does he always have to do this?” Rhett complained to his mom later as they were cleaning up after dinner. Dave was in the living room watching the news and Link was upstairs taking a shower. “College, college, college, it’s like that’s the only thing he cares about.”

“Oh, honey, you know how much he values education,” Debra said. “He is a professor, after all.”

“Yeah, and you know who else are professors? Almost everyone who works in Terra Nova, and none of them care! And you know why? Because he can do things they can’t, he has skills that they don’t, things that they don’t teach at college!” Rhett was flushed and upset. Link might not have cared about Dave’s pointed questions, but Rhett sure did.

“ _Rhett_ ,” his mom chided. Rhett froze. He knew that tone. It was the _Rhett, you need to calm down_ tone.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Sorry, Mama.”

“You don’t need to yell at me, honey. You know I agree with you.” She snapped the lid of a tupperware container closed and put it in the fridge. “Link’s a nice boy and he’s clearly smart and accomplished. I think your father will come around eventually.”

“He better,” Rhett muttered. It was childish and petulant, but he was pissed. He squirted soap into the little compartment in the dishwasher and turned it on.

“I’ll talk to him,” Debra said. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try.”

Rhett smiled. His mom always knew what to do. “Thanks, Mama.”


	21. Chapter 21

“You weren’t kidding about your dad,” Link said that evening as they lounged in bed. They were in Rhett’s childhood bedroom, which was still painted the weird toothpastey blue green color he’d insisted on when he was eight, but all of his posters and trophies and toys were gone, replaced with neutral curtains and a couple framed prints. His full size bed was gone, too, replaced with a queen. “I thought he might bite me.”

Rhett made a face. “He’s not usually that much of an asshole. I wonder what his deal is.”

“His deal is probably that I’m your boyfriend and he wants to make sure I’m worthy of his son,” Link said. “Except he has a really narrow view of what makes someone worthy.”

“Ohhh… you know what, I bet that’s it.” Rhett had only ever brought one other partner home, but he’d been one of Rhett’s college classmates, and Dave hadn’t been nearly as awful.

“Yep.” That matter settled, Link held out his leg for Rhett to inspect. “Look at this lump. What do you think it is? It wasn’t there when I took off the leg sleeve.”

Rhett looked. Link’s thigh was almost back to its normal circumference, but it was still all yellow and brown, and the scars were a livid purple. The lump was a few inches above his knee and the size of half a golfball. Rhett touched it gently. “Does it hurt?”

“No.”

Rhett poked a little harder. It was soft and squishy. “I bet it’s one of those fluid pockets. You better call and make an appointment to get it drained.”

“Ugh.” Link flopped back on the bed in disgust. “Disgusting.”

Rhett picked up the compression garment and dropped it on Link’s chest. “Here, hide it away.” Link grabbed it and whipped it back at him, so Rhett walloped him with a pillow, and Link responded in kind until they were both laughing so hard they could barely breathe.

~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~**~*~

Rhett woke to the sound of a ringing phone. His eyes snapped open and for a moment he had no idea where he was. Then it came back: he was in his childhood bedroom with Link, and it was Link’s phone that was ringing. The red numbers on the alarm clock read 2:17.

“Nnnng,” Link groaned as he groped around for his phone. Rhett shut his eyes in anticipation of the light. “Oh, shit,” Link whispered, sounding very awake. He must have answered the phone, because it stopped ringing. “Hey, hang on, I gotta go somewhere I can talk,” he said quietly as he slipped out of bed.

“Link?” Rhett whispered.

“It’s someone from the committee,” Link whispered back. “Go back to sleep.”

Rhett planned to wait up for Link, but he must have failed, because the next thing he knew, Link was shaking his shoulder gently. “Rhett, wake up.”

He opened his eyes blearily. The clock now read 4:29. “Who was on the phone?”

“This guy Marcus from the oversight committee, I don’t think you’ve ever met him,” Link said. “And he was calling because Yuxia Wu-Johnson is coming to address all the Terra Nova people, so I need to go back to LA early.”

 _That_ woke Rhett up. Yuxia Wu-Johnson, the first person to walk on a new planet, the mother of the portal, one of Rhett’s heroes. She’d been in Beijing working on a portal related project there for several years. If she was coming to LA, it had to be serious. “When do you have to go?”

“Now.”

“ _Now_?” Rhett exclaimed. “But we’re supposed to be here for two more days!”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Link turned on the bedside light and started gathering his things. “Once this Terra Nova bullshit gets settled, we can go on a real vacation.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that.” Rhett sat up and rubbed his hands over his face. “Do you want some coffee? I’ll go make some.”

“I’d love some coffee.” Link leaned over and kissed Rhett’s forehead. “It’s only two days.”

“I know.” It might be two days now, but eventually Link would go back to Terra Nova for months. Rhett shoved that thought into the back of his mind to be dealt with later. He got up, gave Link a hug, and went to make coffee.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rhett’s parents were rather surprised the next morning when they woke up and found that Link was gone. Rhett apologized on his behalf, and then apologized on his own behalf, because Link had taken the rental car and left him stranded, so one of them would have to drive him to the airport. Debra immediately voluntold her husband.

As much as Rhett missed Link, it was kind of nice having his parents to himself. He had a long talk with his mom as they made tortellini from scratch (his favorite, and a once a year treat). “I just don’t know how it’s gonna work with him gone for most of the year,” he said as he mixed cheese and sausage for the filling.

“How long have you been together now?” Debra asked.

“Um, like a month?”

“And how long have you known him?”

“Three months.”

“It might be a little early to worry about that,” she said gently, and held up a hand to silence Rhett as he opened his mouth to protest. “In any case, he said he doesn’t even know if he’ll have a job to go back to, or when he’ll be cleared to ride a horse again.”

Rhett scowled as he poked his filling mixture with the wooden spoon. “He’d figure out a way to go back to Terra Nova, even if he just worked at headquarters.”

“Maybe _you_ should get a job in Terra Nova,” Debra suggested.

“Huh.” Rhett had never even considered that. He’d been planning on finding a teaching job, preferably on either coast, but working in Terra Nova would be a dream come true. “That’s a great idea, Mama.”

His mom always knew what to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

That evening, Link sent Rhett a picture of himself with Yuxia Wu-Johnson. She was a tiny woman in her late seventies, not even five feet, and Link loomed over her like a giant.

Rhett: i am SO JEALOUS

Link: shes so cool 

Link: she just has this energy around her

Link: like it makes you want to be a better more productive person

Link: but not in a guilty way

Rhett: how’d you get to meet her anyway?

Link: she asked to meet me

Rhett: what

Link: cuz ive been in tn longer than anyone else

Link: cumulatively 

Link: almost three years

 _Three years_? He’d been working in Terra Nova for six years. Had Link really spent almost half his life in another world? Could a relationship last through that?

Rhett: seriously?

Link: i thought you were a tn fanboy

Link: i know theres website that track that sort of thing

Rhett: not that kind of fanboy

Rhett: that’s crazy

_How much time do you spend here, anyway?” Rhett had asked._

_“Too much and not enough,” Link answered._

Rhett: so what did ywj say about north outpost?

Link: she said that while she understood why the enviro committee wanted to close it

Link: she thinks its important to keep it

Link: that the benefits of knowledge gathered there outweigh the frankly miniscule environmental impact

Link: north outpost is not even a drop in the ocean

Link: its a tiny tiny speck on a big planet

Rhett: sounds about what id expect from her

Link: yeah

Link: so hows it going there?

Rhett: made tortellini with my mom

Link: yum

Link: sorry i missed that

Rhett: what are you up to?

Link: nothing

Link: im bored

Link: i wish i knew other people out here

Rhett: you do

Rhett: sasha erica samson

Link: !!!

Link: you are so smart

Rhett: <3

 _Was it too soon to send a heart?_ Rhett wondered.

Link: <3

Apparently not.


	22. Chapter 22

Rhett had a long discussion with his dad the next day while they raked leaves in the backyard. It got a bit heated, enough so that it became an argument. Rhett didn’t win, but he didn’t lose, either, because he got his dad to admit that yes, Link’s job required a lot of skills that you couldn’t learn in college, and yes, hanging out with grad students and professors all the time was a pretty good way to learn by osmosis. 

His dad had to have the last word, though. “He should still get a degree, though, even if it’s just a bachelors.”

Rhett bit his tongue and didn’t say what he wanted to say, which was that Link was the first person in his family to finish high school and that he’d managed to escape the cycle of poverty not just for himself, but for his family, too. Instead, he just said, “Sure, Dad.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It was somewhat a relief to get back to LA. It might be loud and crowded and shallow, but at least Rhett didn’t have to justify himself to anyone there.

Link had figured out how to get from his apartment to Rhett’s on the Metro without getting lost, so he showed up at Rhett’s place a couple hours after Rhett got home. As soon as Rhett opened the door, Link threw his arms around his neck and gave him a kiss.

“I missed you!” Link said between kisses. “Erica’s cool but you’re my favorite.”

“Oh, you met up with Erica? How’s she doing?”

“Good. She tried to teach me how to play pool.”

“How’d that go?” God, it felt good to have Link in his arms.

“Poorly.” Link giggled. “She said it was about time we got together, by the way.”

“Yeah, we were in the barn after the storm and she said you liked me,” Rhett said. “And I had no idea what to do with that information.”

“I think you figured out what to do.” One of LInk’s hands had found its way from the back of Rhett’s neck to his crotch. He smirked as he felt Rhett’s half hardness through the soft fabric of his joggers. “And I think you know what to do now.”

“Yep.” Rhett slid his hands down to Link’s ass and gave it a full, double handed squeeze before picking Link up and carrying him to bed.

It was much, much easier and much more fun having sex with a working leg and a working back.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Weeks passed. Link’s leg got better, then it got worse, and then it got better again. It still had some dips and lumps, but the scars started to fade and his doctor gave him the go-ahead to start using it more. Link went back to the bike shop and traded in his recumbent for an upright bike.

“So what kind of cryptid did the bike guy ask you about this time?” Rhett asked.

“Thunderbirds.”

“That’s… not a cryptid.” Rhett would pay good money to see Marty’s reaction to the bike shop guy calling her one of her peoples’ sacred creatures a cryptid.

“I know, that’s what I told him. Marty would kick his ass.” Link buckled his helmet. “Let’s go see how out of shape I am.” He mounted his bike and set off.

Even out of shape, Link left Rhett in his dust. It wasn’t that Link was particularly into fitness, Rhett thought as he peddled, as much as he just had so much nervous energy to burn. He was like a border collie that had to be tired out or it would tear everything up.

At least he seemed to be happier in LA now. Rhett had introduced him to Emmanuel, Shelby, and some other people from the mouse lab, and between them and the other grad students from Terra Nova, Link actually began to have a social life that didn’t revolve around Rhett.

It still wasn’t clear when Link would be able to leave LA. The expedition would have ended a few days ago if it hadn’t been interrupted, but the oversight committee was still going strong. Link said that they seemed to be leaning towards keeping North Outpost open, but all future expeditions had been cancelled or suspended. 

Rhett didn’t mind. He wasn’t going back to Terra Nova anytime soon, because despite what his mom suggested, there weren’t any jobs he was qualified for. Link being stuck in LA suited him just fine, and hey, maybe Link would learn to love it. Maybe Link would decide to stay, at least for a while.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rhett: idk why i have to go do this

Rhett: my incident report was five pages

Rhett: like thats everything i had to say

Rhett had received an email summoning him to speak with a few members of the oversight committee about what happened on the day of the storm.

Link: obv they have more questions

Rhett: did you have to do an interview like this?

Link: yeah

Link: more than one actually

Rhett: ugh

Link: yeah thats about how i feel

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rhett’s interview took place in a conference room in an administrative building. There were three interviewers, whose names Rhett promptly forgot. They sat on one side of the conference table across from Rhett. In the middle of the table were some bottles of water and a digital recorder.

“We’re going to record this, if you don’t mind,” said the lead interviewer, a balding man in his fifties. He had some papers in front of him, and Rhett was pretty sure that they were copies of his incident report, and maybe Link’s, too.

“Uh, sure,” Rhett said. “Why, though?”

“The storm was the most major incident in Terra Nova thus far,” said one of the other interviewers, an older woman with big catseye glasses. She had papers in front of her, too. “Now, the morning of the storm. In your own words, please tell us how Link Neal came to invite you on the hunting trip.”

“Uh, okay.” This was weird. Surely they knew all this already? “Link was building a scaffold, and Samson wanted to help but he’s hopeless at stuff like that, so I distracted him.”

“Samson being Samson Askew, your fellow researcher?”

“Yeah.” The interview continued on like that, with Rhett’s interlocutors painstakingly teasing every detail out of him, on and on. Rhett was as annoyed as he was mystified.

“Who suggested sharing the sleeping bag?” The balding man asked.

“Link,” Rhett answered. “He was all blue and shivering. You know how skinny he is.” Link was no longer as skinny as he had been in Terra Nova, having gained some much-needed weight during his time in LA.

The woman with glasses nodded and wrote something down. “Had he ever initiated any physical content before then?”

What an odd question. “No. He barely even talked to me.”

“I understand that you are now in a relationship with Mr. Neal, correct?” The third interviewer was the most generic middle aged man Rhett had ever seen.

“Yeah.” It wasn’t a secret. Everyone from North Outpost knew, as did everyone in the mouse lab.

“When did that begin?”

“The day after I got home.”

“And who initiated the relationship?”

“Lin--” The penny dropped for Rhett. “You’re trying to figure out if he, like, sexually harassed me or something?”

“That’s not our primary goal here, but yes,” the balding interviewer said.

“No, he didn’t,” Rhett answered hotly. “In fact, he went out of his way _not_ to. That’s why he barely talked to me, because he liked me and didn’t want to get close because I’d be leaving. Hell, _I_ probably deserve to be punished way more than he does, because I checked him out in the shower!” He did not mention that Link checked him out, too.

“Checking out your fellow researchers in the showers is inevitable,” the female interpreter said drily. “I mean, it’s not _good_ , but it does happen.”

That made Rhett feel a little better. “Link never did anything inappropriate, okay? I mean, even when we were in the sleeping bag, he was professional, or as professional as he could be, I guess.”

“Mm.” The lead interviewer swept up his papers and tapped them on the table to straighten him. “We’ll finish up this interview, but I feel comfortable telling you that what you’ve told us lines up with what Darryl Johnson and Martha White Clay said.”

Rhett blinked. “Marty is short for Martha? Huh.” 

“Yes,” said the nondescript third interviewer. “Now, what steps did you take to ensure your camp would be noticed by rescuers?”


	23. Chapter 23

“... and then I was like, _oh shit, they’re trying to figure out if Link was inappropriate_!” Rhett said. “And it pissed me off.”

“Why?” Link asked. Rhett couldn’t understand how he was so calm. He’d come over to Link’s apartment immediately after the interview full of indignant fury expecting Link to match it, but instead Link just gave him a slightly puzzled look. “I mean, it’s a valid question.”

“Because they know you!” Rhett exclaimed. “You’ve worked for them for six years and never had any problems. And we’ve been back for two months now. Why didn’t they do this sooner?”

“That was, like, one of the first conversations I had when I went into the office,” Link said. “And I know someone did phone interviews with Marty and Darryl as soon as the phone line got fixed and they were like, yeah, no, we’ve never seen Link do anything inappropriate.”

“You never mentioned anything about this!” Rhett said in exasperation. He stood up and started pacing.

“I guess because it seemed pretty settled to me?” Link shrugged as he watched Rhett walk back and forth. “No one ever said anything to me about it after they talked to Marty and Darryl, and I figured it was settled.”

“Oh.”

“They were probably more interested in figuring out if I took all the correct steps so that we wouldn’t die,” Link said. “Since that’s my actual job.”

“Well, we didn’t.” Rhett flopped back down on the couch. “So you better still have a job.”

“Mmm.” Link pulled Rhett into a hug. “If I don’t, it won’t be because of that. It’ll be because there’s nowhere to put me.”

“Have you heard any more about North Outpost?” Rhett knew that Marty and Darryl were due to come back in a few days, but beyond that he didn’t know anything.

“I know they’re sending a few people out to stay there over the winter,” Link said. He took Rhett’s hand and interlaced their fingers. Link’s hands were heavily calloused, but his fingers were long and delicate. “Which sounds promising.”

“Yeah.” Rhett brought Link’s hand up to his mouth and kissed it. “But if it doesn’t reopen… have you thought about what you might do instead?” What he really meant was, _What would it mean for our future_?

“Well…” Link began. “There’s all sorts of hunting guide jobs, and I could probably get a pretty nice one in Montana or Idaho for big game, elk and stuff. Or maybe a ranger at a national park.”

Rhett tried to imagine Link in a Smokey Bear hat and failed. It was easier to imagine him yelling at tourists in Yellowstone to stay away from the bison. “You’d probably like that.”

“Yeah, but there’s a problem,” Link said. 

“What?”

“You wouldn’t be there.”

Rhett stared at him, openmouthed. It was what he wanted to hear, and yet… “You can’t base a major decision on me like that!”

“Why not?” Link asked, looking at him levelly.

“Because _I_ don’t know what I’m going to do!” Rhett answered, throwing his free hand up in the air. “I’m going to move wherever I can find a job.”

Link shrugged. “I’ll come with. Hunting’s legal in all fifty states.”

“Link…” Rhett said weakly, staring at the man next to him. He’d been truthful, months ago in Terra Nova, when he said he’d never met anyone like Link. He was smart and tough and practical, and self assured and confident in a way that Rhett could only dream of being, and he looked at Rhett with his bright blue eyes wide open and honest. Rhett was hopelessly lost. “I love you.”

Link’s face split into a brilliant smile and he launched himself at Rhett. He put a palm on each of Rhett’s cheeks and kissed him. “I love you, too.” They grinned stupidly at each other. “And we’ll figure it out, okay?”

“Okay,” Rhett answered. They would.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The oversight committee finally released Link the first week of December and gave him until the end of the month to vacate his apartment. This didn’t come as a surprise, but it did spark a conversation about what their next step should be.

“I’m going home, at least until after New Year’s,” Link said. “But I’ll come back.”

“Oh?” Rhett raised an eyebrow. “You’re moving to LA?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Link teased. “But I’m definitely going to stay in LA until we figure out what happens next.”

“So, are you, uh…” Rhett gestured around his tiny studio. It was cramped and not in the best repair.

Link looked around and shook his head. “I thought I’d find a sublet, actually.”

“Oh, okay. Good.” Rhett was content to live in the small, crappy apartment that his miniscule stipend allowed, but Link deserved something better. “I’m not really sure I’m ready to live together.”

Link nodded in agreement. “Me neither.”

They hashed out a plan. Link would go back to North Carolina and Rhett would join him after a few weeks so they could spend Christmas with their respective families (and maybe Link could actually meet Rhett’s family). After New Year’s, they’d return to LA, where Rhett would go back to the mouse lab and finish his thesis and Link would find a sublet and do… something.

“Maybe I’ll get a job,” he said. “Something outdoors, like landscaping. I used to mow lawns when I was growing up.”

“Maybe you’ll get called back to Terra Nova,” Rhett said.

Link sighed. “Maybe, but I’m not counting on it.” Rhett knew how much the loss of Terra Nova hurt Link. It was the only place where he felt like he belonged, the only place where he was truly comfortable. He usually kept it together fairly well, but there had been a few nights where Rhett woke up to find Link crying silently beside him, and he couldn’t do anything but hold Link until he cried himself out.

Rhett reached over and pulled Link into his lap and wrapped him in a tight hug. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“I know.”

“ _We’re_ gonna be okay.” 

“Yeah.” Link buried his face into Rhett’s shoulder. “It’s just hard, sometimes.”

“I know.” Rhett laid his cheek on the top of Link’s head, and they sat there, just taking comfort in each other’s presence.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 

Link: [img]

Rhett glanced at the picture on his phone. It showed Link’s cousin Maggie feeding an apple to a horse. He frowned and enlarged the picture. He knew that horse.

Rhett: is that biscuit?

Link: yes!

Link: she was never bombproof like jupiter

Link: and it got way worse after the storm

Link: so she got retired and i bought her

Rhett: how much does it cost to ship a horse cross country?

Link: more than a modified recumbent bike

Link: thats for sure

Rhett: does maggie ride?

Link: shes gonna once biscuit gets settled

Link: shes stoked she always wanted a pony lol

Rhett: so you have to get a new horse if you go back?

Link: yeah

Link: ill cross that bridge when i get to it tho

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went to college in Iowa, and my roommate's BFF had her horse shipped to Iowa from SEATTLE. There were a lot of rich kids at that school and there was a lot of egregious rich people nonsense, but that took the cake for me.


	24. Chapter 24

Everything went according to plan. Rhett flew out to North Carolina for Christmas, and his parents got to meet Link properly. Either Rhett’s mom talked to his dad, or what Rhett said a couple months ago actually made an impression, because his dad was much nicer to Link this time.

Rhett went back to LA a couple days after Christmas while Link stayed in North Carolina for another week. By the time he got back, he had three or four sublets to check out. He ended up taking one that was two Metro stops away from Rhett’s place, with a law student roommate who just wanted someone clean and quiet.

Link got a job working construction, which both burned off his energy and also paid more than most other jobs he could get with his odd work history. “It’s just until we decided where we’re going,” he said with a shrug when Rhett expressed dismay.

For his part, Rhett worked in the mouse lab a little and on his thesis a lot. When it was done, and he finally, finally got his degree with the title and stupid hat that went along with it, with all his family and Link in attendance, Rhett felt like the chapter of his life that had been focused on getting to Terra Nova had ended. 

The next chapter would be focused on living on Earth, with Link by his side.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“This is, like, the resume of a _Lonesome Dove_ character,” Link said as he morosely scrolled through what he’d written. 

Rhett peered over his shoulder. He was brushing up his resume, as well. “Well, what did you have on your old resume?”

Link snorted. “Bold of you to think I had a resume.”

“Then how’d you get interviewed?”

“My buddy gave me his uncle’s email and I sent him a message. We emailed back and forth and talked on the phone and then they flew me out, which was pretty much the most exciting thing _ever_ ,” Link said. “They liked my attitude and I had all the skills they were looking for except for horseback riding.”

“You didn’t know how to ride?” Rhett asked in surprise.

“No!” Link laughed. “Where was I gonna keep a horse in a trailer park? I learned in Terra Nova, on Biscuit.”

“Huh,” Rhett said. “You should list all the solar panels and turbines and green energy stuff that you’ve worked on. That’ll make it less cowboyish.”

“Good plan.” Link tapped away on his keyboard and Rhett went back to his own laptop. They worked away in silence for ten or fifteen minutes before Link let out a yelp. Rhett looked over to see him staring at his screen, open mouthed, before letting out a hysterical little giggle. “Holy shit.”

“What? Is something wrong?” Rhett asked.

“Nooo, not really. Hang on.” Link typed something short and hit the enter key with a flourish. “Check your email.”

Rhett did, and saw that Link had forwarded him something from the Terra Nova oversight committee. He opened it and read. “Holy shit!”

“Right?” Link said in disbelief. “Just as we’re planning on leaving LA…”

The oversight committee was offering Link a new contract for a position at East Outpost, which was much closer (only about a six hour ride) to headquarters than North Outpost was. Consequently, instead of a four month trip followed by two months off, he’d take shorter monthly trips of a week or two.

“Wow,” Rhett said when he finished. “Guess we’re staying, huh?”

“You’re okay with that?” Link asked. Rhett could tell that he badly wanted to accept the offer, but he also didn’t want to hold Rhett back. 

Luckily, Rhett didn’t have anything holding him back. “Of course,” he said. “It’s _Terra Nova_ , Link. I know you want it more than anything.”

“Yeah.” Link ran his fingertips across his keyboard thoughtfully. “Except you, maybe.”

Rhett laughed. “Good thing you don’t have to choose, right?” Link grinned back at him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Before Link left for a trip in Terra Nova, he spent a couple weeks going over to headquarters as a commuter to meet his new horse and get everything ready. The first night he came home after spending the day in Terra Nova almost broke Rhett’s heart. Link was _so_ happy and _so_ excited, and Rhett felt both gutted that he could never make Link that happy and deeply, deeply envious that Link got to return to Terra Nova and he didn’t. He did his best to not take his disappointment out on Link, and Link did his best to not make Rhett feel any worse than he absolutely had to. It was hard for both of them.

Staying in LA had really thrown a wrench into Rhett’s plans. He kept his job at the mouse lab for the time being, and picked up some tutoring students on the side while he looked for a job. Link wanted to get an apartment together, but Rhett didn’t want to leave his relatively cheap, rent controlled apartment until he had gainful employment.

He also wanted to make sure he could get a handle on his resentment before it ended up ruining everything.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“I’ll see you in two weeks, okay?” Link said. He and Rhett were in the lobby of the portal building, saying goodbye before Link left on his first excursion to East Outpost. East Outpost exchanged information with headquarters every few days, so they’d be able to send emails, videos, and pictures with some regularity. Rhett could handle that. He couldn’t have handled Link leaving for four months to North Outpost, but he could handle two weeks.

“Be careful, okay?” Rhett said quietly, forehead to forehead with Link. “I don’t want you coming back with another busted leg.”

Link laughed. His thigh was back to full function, with only two scars and a couple small lumps and bumps to show that it had ever been damaged. The doctor said that it had healed better than anyone had expected. “I’ll be careful, promise.”

“Okay.” Rhett kissed him. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.” Link gave him a tight squeeze, and Rhett watched him disappear through the door that led to the pre-portal offices.


	25. Chapter 25

Having Link gone was somehow both easier and harder. He wasn’t around to remind Rhett of what he was missing, which in turn reminded Rhett that he didn’t have either Link _or_ Terra Nova.

Rhett got an interview for an adjunct professorship at a community college, which he thought went well. It would be an alright job, although he was of the opinion that being an adjunct professor was kind of bullshit. He had a few other interviews as well, but nothing that excited him.

He went out for drinks with his fellow North Outpost alum Erica. “I thought having Terra Nova on my resume would have people falling all over themselves to hire me,” he said.

“Yeah, you and me both,” Erica agreed. “I’m working on a grant to install a turbine in Greenland.”

“That sounds awesome! I want to go to Greenland. Wait…” Rhett furrowed his brow. Greenland had lots of ice and Iceland had lots of green, right? “Maybe I mean Iceland.”

Erica snorted. “You can come visit and eat some fermented shark or something.”

“Deal!” Rhett held out his beer bottle and Erica clinked her glass against it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link sent pictures of his new horse, Ladybug, along with pictures of the stream where the current crop of researchers were taking a survey of aquatic creatures. He sent a video of one of them, a thing that looked like an unsettling cross between a crawdad and a centipede that moved with an odd, sinuous motion with the caption _pretty sure this was made by satan himself._

Rhett threw himself into his job search. The sooner he found something fulfilling, the sooner he could get on with his Earthly life. The adjunct professorship didn’t pan out, which Rhett was fine with. 

Two days before Link got back, Rhett opened his email to delete that day’s crop of unwanted newsletters, awesome offers, and other crap. There was something unusual, though. An email from someone named Sruti with an @tarpits.org email.

_Hi Rhett,_

_We met a few months ago at the Tar Pits (I was the one with bright pink glasses). For a long time, we’ve been planning on creating a permanent exhibit focused on the specimens from the Pits and their counterparts in Terra Nova and we finally have the financing and permits to start._

_I know you said your thesis was on comparative anatomy between the Novan zebra mouse and Earth mice and that you have experience in Terra Nova. We’re hoping to have a small team of two or three people who will periodically cross over to Terra Nova to collect samples, take photos, etc, and thought that your background might make you a good candidate._

_Please let me know if you have any additional questions! I’d be happy to answer them._

_Looking forward to hearing from you,_

_Sruti Patel_

_Terra Nova Exhibit Project Manager_

_La Brea Tar Pits_

Rhett didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so he did a little of both.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rhett emailed Sruti back immediately and twenty minutes later, he had good news and bad news. The good news was that he had an interview. The bad news was that it was at the same time he was supposed to go pick Link up from his trip.

Link was just going to have to deal with it, though. Rhett shot off an email to the Terra Nova communications person--they’d have someone cross over and call East Outpost. He wasn’t really supposed to send messages like that unless it was an emergency, but Rhett knew the people in communications weren’t _that_ strict about it. He also knew that someone there would give Link a ride home, which completely assuaged any guilt he may have had.

Rhett spent the next few hours tweaking his resume to reflect both his comparative anatomy background and his familiarity of Novan creatures before sending it off to Sruti for his official application. The next two days were a blur of anxiety, going through his collection of camera trap pictures and choosing a handful of the best, and picking an outfit that struck the perfect balance between casual, professional, and biology dork.

The last task seemed like a waste of time when Sruti greeted him at the welcome desk at the museum. She was wearing a shirt that said WHAT HAPPENS IN THE TAR PITS STAYS IN THE TAR PITS. “Hey!” she greeted Rhett. “Come on back, I’ve got some people for you to meet.”

The interview went swimmingly. Rhett passed around his photos (well, his and Samson’s photos. He made sure to mention Samson multiple times) and everyone was very impressed, especially with the saber tooth cats.

“I’ll give you a call in a day or two, okay?” Sruti said as she escorted Rhett back to the interest.

“Sure. Thank you so much,” Rhett said. As soon as he was out the door, he pulled out his phone. There was a string of texts from Link.

Link: im home

Link: no thanks to you lol

Link: good luck with your interview

Link: call me when you can

Rhett hit the call button. “Link!” he exclaimed when Link answered. “I missed you so much.”

“Then how about you come over and show me how much?” Link said. Rhett could imagine the sultry expression on his face. “And then I want to hear about this job.”

“I’m already on my way, and I can’t wait.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The La Brea Tar Pits job was everything Rhett had hoped and more. The people were great, the work was fascinating, and the pay was more than adequate. Combined with Link’s income, it allowed them to get a larger, nicer apartment than either would have been able to afford alone.

All of Rhett’s jealousy and resentment drained away once he started working, just as he’d hoped would happen. Link might be gone twenty five to fifty percent of the time, but Rhett had his work and his friends to keep him company, and he knew that one day he’d get to go back to Terra Nova again.

It took eight months, but Rhett finally got his chance. A dead saber tooth cat had been found not far from headquarters, and Rhett and one of his colleagues were going to collect it for the exhibit. Rhett was completely stoked, both for the opportunity to go back to Terra Nova, be reunited with his horse Jupiter, and to do some real hands-on science.

There was one other thing that took it from awesome to perfect: Link would be going through the portal that day, too.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Ready?” Link asked, interlacing his fingers with Rhett’s.

“I’ve _been_ ready.” They were standing in front of the velvet curtain that covered the portal. This close, Rhett could smell the hazy gunpowder scent and hear the soft little crackles the portal made.

“Then let’s go.” Link squeezed his hand and pulled back the curtain. They stepped, hand in hand, into another world. Hot, humid air scented with green grass and horse manure slapped Rhett in the face, and he thought that nothing had ever been sweeter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much to everyone who read, commented, shared, enjoyed, and sent me asks and stuff on Tumblr, and extra thanks to @sohox and @mythicaltzu for their support and input.
> 
> The idea of a pristine, parallel Earth was stolen from "The Long Earth" by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, but the rest is (mostly) mine.

**Author's Note:**

> @pinecontents on tumblr


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